This article analyses the decentralisation process in the municipality of Niteroi, focusing on the main changes occurred in the administrative structure of its Municipal Secretary of Health as well as on the implications of this process for the Oral Health. In this regard, the objective of this article is threefold: a) to show both the historical and political aspects of this process; b) to reveal the ways in which the Oral Health fitted in with the new model of health care in the municipality of Niteroi; and c) to point out the insertion/involvement of dentists in that changes. It is important to bear in mind that the emergence of health policies in Niteroi since 1990, when the Integrated National Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde) was fully developed and the health policy was already defined, was essential for the Oral Health not only to reformulate its health care mo dei but also to became part of the Public Health general proposal. The parameter used to evaluate the Oral Health progress in the field of Public Health was the directives of the "Odontological Sanitary Movement", consolidated in the First National Conference of Oral Health, which was held in Brasilia in 1986.
Health policies; oral health; Niterói; decentralisation process