DSC helps sector to improve researcher recruitment and retention

12.01.26

A new oral health sub-report on clinical academic recruitment and retention

By Professor Chris Vernazza, Interim Head of Newcastle University School of Dental Sciences, and Project Executive for the OSCHR oral health sub-report writing project

Oral health remains a significant concern across the UK and globally for individuals and society with oral conditions some of the commonest and having a significant health, wellbeing and financial effects. High quality research is key to being able to address the problems that oral health conditions create and a broad range of activity is necessary to ensure that we understand oral conditions, discover and test new ways of managing these so that we can implement the best evidence-based policy and practice.

Undertaking this research relies on whole teams of individuals with different skills coming together to share their knowledge and expertise and it is vital that the research is clinically informed and relevant. We therefore need a well-trained, sufficient workforce of clinically active researchers. Dental Schools Council collect data on the size and shape of the oral health academic workforce every year and though the findings show that the full time equivalent dental academic workforce size has not changed significantly over time, there is a concern that more of the workforce is dedicated to education of future dental professionals with less individuals being research active and less time dedicated to research activity. In addition, the survey shows:

near equal gender balance overall but persistent under-representation of women at professor level;
rising popularity less-than-full-time working for both men and women;
senior posts dominated by over 55s;
growth in Asian representation and continued under-representation of Black clinical academics (<2% total workforce).

The Office for Strategic Coordination of Health Research (OSCHR) coordinates health research funders to support a strong UK health research environment. In January 2025, OSCHR published a main report (prepared by the Medical Research Council) describing declining numbers of clinical researchers and calling for discipline-specific sub-reports to define the problems and propose deliverable solutions. Medicine and Nursing, Midwives and Allied Health Professionals (NMAHPs) reports have already been published and have resulted in action such as the establishment of a cross-funder group, simplifying cross-funder eligibility criteria for grants, and new NIHR Clinical Future Leaders Fellowships with tapered funding.

Dental Schools Council is now leading the preparation of an oral health clinical research workforce report for OSCHR with a broad scope including dentists and DCPs, general dentistry and specialties, and the full pipeline from undergraduate exposure to retirement, across all four UK nations. A Project Board, guided by a wider stakeholder group, with representation from all four nations and early career researchers, and input from partners including NIHR and COPDEND, has been meeting monthly since September.

Themes so far have included the need for

Early exposure and multiple entry routes to research careers.
Generational expectations of careers to be considered e.g. rise of less than full time work.
Capacity for support and progression opportunities.
Flexible pathways that candidates can reasonably navigate, especially for DCPs and general dental practice.
Strong succession planning at national and local levels.

The oral health subreport group members are now working on a series of recommendations in each of these themed areas and the aim is to submit the report by Summer 2026 to OSCHR for approval. Once this is secured, it will be vital for stakeholders across the sector including Higher Education institutes, research funders, NHS workforce organisations across the four nations to commit to implementation of the actions.