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Article History

Received: 24 March 2025

Accepted: 16 June 2025

First Online: 3 July 2025

Declarations

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: Ethical approval for this study was obtained from the Greater Western Human Research Ethics Committee [2024/ETH00501]. Following ethical approval, the project was submitted to the Research Ethics and Governance Information System (REGIS) and a site-specific application was subsequently submitted for each participating LHDs.This study was conducted as part of a broader study which included an online questionnaire for oral health practitioners employed in rural LHDs in NSW followed by an interview which formed the basis of this present study. All potential participants for the broader study were provided with an online information statement that outlined the study’s objectives, nature of their involvement and potential risks prior to participating. Online informed consent was obtained from each participant, ensuring that they understood their right to withdraw from the study at any time without consequence. The questionnaire component of the broader study incorporated a skip logic function, which ensured that participants could only proceed with the questionnaire after explicitly providing consent. Once the questionnaire was completed, the participants were given the opportunity to opt-in for the interview component of this present study. If participants agreed to take part in the interview, they were contacted directly by the primary researcher via email to then organise a suitable time for the virtual interview. Verbal consent was gained at the start of each interview for all participants.To protect the participants’ confidentiality, unique study identification numbers were used throughout the data collection as well as the analysis process and all identifying information was removed from the transcripts. Video recordings were stored securely on the University of Sydney’s licence eNotebook (LabArchives) platform during analysis and only accessible by the research team. Upon completion, the data will then be archived securely on the non-public research platform, Research Data Store (RDS) for 5 years and then destroyed.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare no competing interests.