A Conversation

Moderated by Keisha Ray, PhD

Interactive Feature

–Keisha Ray

Oral health is health, which we know. In fact, it has been more than 20 years since the 2000 Surgeon General’s report on oral health in America, and more than 25 years since Surgeon General C. Everett Coop said, “You are not healthy without good oral health,” bringing the seemingly basic idea more public attention, independent of its associations with other bodily diseases, since that’s often how we like to talk about oral health. Oral health is important in its own right and can have great repercussions for wellbeing. So to this effect, in 2021 the ADA issued a statement saying that oral health is integral to overall health, dentistry is essential to healthcare. Yet in the United States, dentistry and dental health is separated from medical care and medical insurance. And this has contributed to poor oral health and social, economic, and physical suffering for many Americans.

But that suffering is not equal. Marginalized populations such as people from low income backgrounds, immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, children living in poverty all have a higher incidence of oral disease. This all means that ignoring inequities in oral health is unethical and something we can no longer minimize or try to sweep under the rug. Yet in 2021, the National Institutes of Health Report, Oral Health in America: Advances and Challenges received very little, almost no attention. Is this an indication of how much dental professionals care about these issues?