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Is Australia's lack of national clinical leadership hampering efforts with the oral health policy agenda?

Version 2 2024-06-06, 03:21
Version 1 2023-06-06, 05:37
journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-06, 03:21 authored by Tan NguyenTan Nguyen, A Arora, S Sethi, DJ Gavanescu, R Heredia, B Scully, C Lin, M Hall
The landmark 2021 Resolution on Oral Health by the 74th World Health Assembly has elevated the importance of oral health into the global health policy agenda. This has led to the development and adoption of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Strategy on Oral Health in 2022. It acknowledged the need to integrate oral health as part of universal health coverage (UHC), which is supported by national clinical leadership for oral health. Although Australia is a signatory WHO member state, it is yet to appoint a Commonwealth Chief Dental Officer to provide national clinical leadership. This commentary provides a background on the current issues on population oral health in Australia, an insight into the Australian oral healthcare system, and explores some of the challenges and learnings related to previous Commonwealth dental programs. This paper highlights why expertise in dental public health is required to steer national oral health policy that is focused on prevention and early intervention. A population oral health approach for UHC should be informed by evidence, prioritise and address oral health inequities, and be co-ordinated by national clinical leadership for oral health.

History

Journal

Australian health review : a publication of the Australian Hospital Association

Volume

47

Pagination

192-196

Location

Melbourne, Vic.

ISSN

0156-5788

eISSN

1449-8944

Language

English

Publication classification

C4 Letter or note

Issue

2

Publisher

CSIRO Publishing