Netwerkkaart Plus: Data-driven Policy Dashboard for Child Oral Health
Netwerkkaart Plus is a public-private partnership that develops an interactive policy dashboard to support early identification and prevention of inequalities in child oral health. The consortium includes Hogeschool Utrecht, ACTA, MondzorgHUB, health insurers, oral health professionals and technical partners. The project builds on scientific insights from preventive oral health research and valorises them into a TRL-6 decision-support tool for policymakers and practitioners.
Early childhood oral health is essential for overall health and development, yet access to preventive care is uneven. In the Netherlands, up to 60% of toddlers do not visit a dental care provider, particularly those from lower-income or migrant families. Early childhood caries remains one of the most common chronic conditions and leads to pain, reduced quality of life and higher long-term healthcare costs. The new Youth Health Care (YHC) Guideline on Oral Health (2025) calls for better collaboration between JGZ and dental care, but regional policymakers still lack clear data on where preventive action is most needed.
Netwerkkaart Plus develops a dashboard that visualises the distribution of youth health centres and dental practices, the number of newborns per region, child-to-provider ratios, combined with data on preventive care use and socio-economic risk. This helps municipalities, YHC organisations and dental practices to identify service gaps, prioritise outreach and plan capacity more effectively. The tool is co-created with end-users to ensure usability and relevance for local decision-making.
The project consists of four steps: designing indicators, building the dashboard, testing it with users and creating a long-term plan for implementation and ownership. The result is a tested TRL-6 prototype that supports implementation of the YHC guideline and aligns with national ambitions for prevention, equitable access and effective use of care capacity.
By making inequalities visible and actionable, Netwerkkaart Plus supports data-informed decision-making and helps reduce health disparities in early childhood.
