It is well known that people with severe mental illness (SMI) often have their lives shortened significantly by physical conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Less attention, however, has been paid to inequalities in oral health. Yet, people with SMI experience stark oral health inequalities compared to the general population. This poor oral health can cause high levels of pain and can impact on self-esteem and quality of life, affecting activities as basic as eating, talking and sleeping, and interfering with a person’s relationships and their ability to maintain employment.

There are complex bi-directional interactions between oral diseases, SMI and chronic inflammatory physical conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, that tend to cluster in people with SMI. Thus, managing oral diseases is key to supporting the recovery from SMI and to the management of the clustering physical conditions.

This webinar will present the findings from the MOOD study that aimed to co-create a theory-driven oral hygiene intervention for people with SMI. The intervention, called Restart Smiling, is delivered by primary care and mental health professionals as part of the SMI physical health checks and follow-up care. Its training package was cited within the training resources of NHS England national guidance on improving the physical health of people living with SMI. The webinar will also share the findings from RESTART: a national priority setting partnership to identify the top 10 research priorities for oral health and dental care amongst people with severe mental ill-health. RESTART followed the James Lind Alliance methodology.

Dr Easter Joury
Consultant in Public Health at Sutton Council, and Visiting Academic in Dental Public Health at the University of Oxford, Department of Psychiatry
Easter has established a unique national profile by leading a niche and under-researched area at the intersection of mental, physical and oral health, resulting in policy and practice changes.

She led the co-creation of the Restart Smiling intervention to improve the oral hygiene and dental attendance of people with severe mental illness (SMI) using the Behaviour Change Wheel. This led to the development of a flagship oral health training resource for primary care and mental health staff, which was cited within the training resources of NHS England guidance on improving the physical health of people with SMI.

Easter led high profile reports that received praise and recognition nationally and internationally, fed into the White Paper, informed the Health and Social Care Act 2022, were used by the Health and Social Care Select Committee, and were translated from regional projects into national guidance and change in practice and policy.

She established transdisciplinary research collaborations nationally and internationally and played consultancy and advisory roles across academia, NHS England, Integrated Care Boards, Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, NHS Trusts, local authorities, industry, regulatory bodies and voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations.

Easter has a strong track record as a keynote speaker in high profile meetings and conferences, and reviewer for national and international research grant programmes and high impact peer-reviewed journals. Her publications reflect her research on interventions to reduce oral health inequalities; with a particular focus on people with SMI and workforce capability building.

Dr Roisin Mooney
Chair. Senior Postdoctoral Fellow Department of Psychiatry
Roisin Mooney is a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow and project manager in the CHiMES Collaborative Group, in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford. Her work focusses on recognising and addressing different forms of inequality in health care systems. Much of Roisin’s work has been centred around foregrounding the voices of those with relevant lived experience at all levels of research. Roisin was the Co-PI for the Co-PACT study and is a Co-Investigator on the Co-PICS study. Co-PACT explored the disproportionate sectioning of racialised populations under the Mental Health Act in the UK, using photovoice as a novel and creative policy-research tool to engage service users as co-researchers. Co-PICS is an experience-based co-design study exploring care of people from diverse ethnic groups living with psychosis and multimorbidity. Both projects are/were funded by the NIHR.