What are health professionals' perceptions and attitudes regarding children with early childhood caries and their families? A qualitative research protocol to assess oral health stigma in the medical setting.

Introduction: Dental caries is one of the most common non-communicable diseases in children. The disease management of caries relies on both a preventive individual approach (fluoridation, risk evaluation) and the surgical treatment of established carious lesions. Similar to other non-communicable diseases (obesity, mental diseases, etc), health professionals' negative perceptions of patients have been shown to affect the quality of disease management. Regarding dental caries in children, some data have indicated the presence of discriminating beliefs and behaviours towards these children and their families in the medical setting. However, oral health stigma related to dental care remains a largely unexplored issue.

Methods And Analysis: This study presents an exploratory research protocol focusing on the perceptions and attitudes of health professionals towards children with early childhood caries (ECC) and their parents. Semistructured interviews will be conducted among medical and dental health professionals, and verbatim quotations obtained from audio transcriptions will be analysed to identify health professionals' perceptions of ECC and the influence of these perceptions on clinical care for these children.

Ethics And Dissemination: The research ethics committee of the Department of Family Medicine at University Lyon 1 approved this protocol. The results will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at scientific meetings.

Trial Registration Number: NCT05284279.