Oral health‐related stigma: Describing and defining a ubiquitous phenomenon

Abstract

AbstractThis paper is the fourth of a series of narrative reviews to critically rethink underexplored concepts in oral health research. The series commenced with an initial commissioned framework of Inclusion Oral Health, which spawned further exploration into the social forces that undergird social exclusion and othering. The second review challenged unidimensional interpretations of the causes of inequality by bringing intersectionality theory to oral health. The third exposed how language, specifically labels, can perpetuate and (re)produce vulnerability by eclipsing the agency and power of vulnerabilised populations. In this fourth review, we revisit othering, depicted in the concept of stigma. We specifically define and conceptualize oral health‐related stigma, bringing together prior work on stigma to advance the robustness and utility of this theory for oral health research.