CED INTERN
CED-EDSA Internship experience: from Brussels, with love In October 2019, the Council of European Dentists (CED) welcomed the first CED-EDSA intern in the Brussels Office. The CED-EDSA internship was an ambitious idea that was put forward by the EDSA Executive several years ago with the aim to implement a position that would provide a crucial link between the CED and EDSA, facilitating close collaboration of the two organisations. Bringing the students’ and young professionals’ point of view to the table is one of the main principles on which this cooperation relies and will work in the future.
Daniela Timuș, CED Intern and preventative services in all countries. The Global Burden of Diseases Study shows that oral health has not improved in the last 25 years and oral conditions remained a major public health challenge all over the world in 2015. Clearly, oral diseases pose a very serious public health challenge to all actors, including policy
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n October 2019, the Council of European Dentists (CED) welcomed the first CED-EDSA intern in the Brussels Office. The CED-EDSA internship was an ambitious idea that was put forward by the EDSA Executive several years ago with the aim to implement a position that would provide a crucial link between the CED and EDSA, facilitating close collaboration of the two organisations. Bringing the students’ and young professionals’ point of view to the table is one of the main principles on which this cooperation relies and will work in the future. The Council of European Dentists is a European not-for-profit association which represents over 340,000 dentists across Europe. The CED concentrates its activities on promoting high standards of oral health and aims to contribute to safeguarding the protection of public health by actively lobbying the European Insti-
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tutions. Having the expertise in areas of paramount importance for dental health, the CED advocates through its policy statements and drafts amendments to proposed EU legislation so as to ensure that the views of European dentists and patients’ needs are reflected in all EU decisions regarding oral health. Therefore, by functioning in a political environment, it has the purpose to ensure that oral health is taken into account during relevant decision-making processes. Oral health is essential to general health and contrary to common public misconception, consists of much more than having healthy teeth. The Lancet Series on Oral Health published in 2019 points out that oral health has been neglected globally and despite the mostly preventable impact of oral conditions on almost four billion people in the world, we are still facing deficiencies in oral health care
“Being placed in a different working environment that was still focusing on dentistry allowed me to acquire a broader perspective on our profession, especially as an integrated part of general health.” makers. Therefore, dentistry matters to health policy, and health policy matters to dentistry. That’s why EDSA has been focusing more on policy work during the last year. Besides introducing a new position within the Executive, i.e. Policy Officer, the internship at the Council of European Dentists has proved to be paramount in order to involve and represent European dental students on a political level. The work of the CED-EDSA intern is
