PODCAST: Oral health takes centre stage

In this episode we’re talking about oral health and noncommunicable diseases, or NCDs, with Dr Greg Chadwick, President of FDI World Dental Federation, and Dr Dympna Kavanagh, Chief Dental Officer for the Republic of Ireland. What they both stress in today’s chat is how the adoption in 2021 of a World Health Assembly resolution flipped the way that most people thought of oral health—primarily as something isolated from general health. Today, both Dympna and Greg are preparing for the first World Health Organization global meeting on oral health which, says Dympna, the WHO insists should be attended by two representatives of Member States—one tasked with oral health, the other with health overall. The silo has been removed and replaced by integration and a multisectoral approach to oral health, which shares many risk factors with NCDs, as you will hear.