Who are we?

The Observatory of Dental Caries Research in Latin America (OICAL) is an initiative promoted by the IADR/LAR (International Association for Dental Research – Latin American Region) to strengthen collaboration between IADR divisions and sections in Latin America.

Since its inception in 2018, OICAL has been driven by the project "Multi-Country Training to Create an Observatory of Early Childhood Caries (ECC) to Adolescence for the Latin American Region", executed with the support of various academic institutions in the region.

As an Observatory, we focus our work on research on dental caries in childhood and adolescence, covering areas such as:

• Epidemiology of the disease.
• Impact on the quality of life of children and adolescents.
• Identification of determinants associated with the development of caries throughout their life course.

With an approach based on knowledge translation, we seek to generate scientific evidence that supports clinical and health decision-making adjusted to local and regional realities. Our work includes key stakeholders such as the mother-child binomial and adolescents, consolidating our commitment to oral health in these fundamental stages of life.

Mission

We are a communication and collaboration platform between researchers, academics, and oral health professionals, oriented to develop strategies based on scientific evidence - at the service of communities at risk and oral health systems and services in Latin America - to address dental caries and its determinants in Latin America.
To fulfill this mission, as OICAL we focus on:

• Training teams: Carry out systematic calibrations that strengthen the competencies of participating teams in epidemiological surveys.
• Monitoring the status of dental caries: Study its epidemiological profile, determinants, and consequences in target populations.
• Promoting collaborative research: Facilitate the dissemination and development of multi-center and collaborative studies among research teams.
• Measuring the impact of interventions: Evaluate the results of the strategies implemented in the region and create a repository of relevant scientific publications.