New COVID-19 research starting in September

The GDC are currently commissioning new research to understand the ongoing and emerging impacts of COVID-19 on dental professionals and practices across the UK. This new study will build on the research findings published in December 2020 , and is due to start in September.

Over 9,000 dental professionals responded to the research questionnaire last time around, and over 50 of them participated in focus groups, ensuring results were robust and included voices from a range of settings and business models. The findings have been widely reported and shared with policy makers and members of parliament.

So that the GDC continue to be evidence-led in understanding the scale of the impact and what is needed to support sector recovery, they will be providing the opportunity for all dental professionals on their register to take part in this next round of independent research.

The GDC are also supporting the UK-REACH  study looking at the impact of the pandemic on health professionals across the UK. The team's work on ethnicity and vaccine hesitancy amongst UK healthcare workers will be of interest, and has been recently published in The Lancet Europe .