In 2021, the World Health Assembly passed a resolution on oral health calling for an action plan and a set of targets to achieve within the next decade—measures that aspire to “provide a basis for a healthy mouth, where no one is left behind.”
Changing the Face of Oral Health
A new policy center at Penn Dental Medicine is sinking its teeth into global oral health reforms
Published: February 13, 2024
The resolution came on the heels of a Global Burden of Disease report that found untreated tooth decay was the most common health condition across all medical areas, with the prevalence of oral diseases growing as urbanization increases and living conditions change.
That same year, a $5 million gift to Penn Dental Medicine from Garry Rayant, GD’77, and his wife, Kathy Fields, created the Center for Integrative Global Oral Health (CIGOH) and an endowed professorship that would help recruit a new leader for the Center. Just three years from its inception, CIGOH and its team of international experts are already propelling change within the field and across the world.
From left to right, CIGOH members Ankita Shashikant Bhosale, Alonso Carrasco-Labra, Michael Glick, and Olivia Urquhart. Photo: Kevin Monko.
Building Bridges for Strong Relationships
As Penn Dental Medicine’s first center with a policy focus, CIGOH has been deliberately building collaborative relationships with educators, researchers, and policymakers to address the challenges of achieving equitable oral health. “One of the issues in global oral health is that areas of expertise can be quite siloed,” says Michael Glick, Fields-Rayant Endowed Professor of Integrative Global Oral Health and Clinical Preventive and Restorative Sciences and leader of the Center.
To combat this issue, in 2023 CIGOH convened the first-ever Global Health Forum to bring together key stakeholders, from researchers to academics to practitioners and members of the World Health Organization (WHO). Including discussions that ranged from development goals to equity and disabilities, from research and education to public health initiatives and workforce, the Forum’s impact has continued to manifest in new connections and partnerships. “We were enormously pleased to find out that, in the aftermath of the conference, different groups of people who’d met there began collaborating and working together,” notes Glick.
The Roots of Change in Oral Health
CIGOH sees its potential impact on policy rooted in collaboration and communication. Looking forward to the second Global Health Forum in April of 2024, the Center has also become a member of the nonprofit Cochrane network, an international body dedicated to the collection and dissemination of rigorously researched evidence. “It’s the highest standard of evidence you can have in medicine,” says Alonso Carrasco-Labra, Associate Professor of Preventive and Restorative Sciences at CIGOH and Director of the Cochrane Oral Health Collaborating Center at Penn Dental Medicine. Adds Glick, “And now Penn is one of two Cochrane bodies focused on oral health. We need data to build evidence, and we need evidence to prove impact. That’s how oral health is going to find equal footing in health policy and practice.”
Educating Future Leaders
Together, Glick and the CIGOH team have also developed a Master of Science in Oral and Population Health program that aligns with the Center’s mission and takes its mandate a step further. Launched this year, the program’s curriculum focuses on developing public and population health leaders who will contribute to policy work at every step, informing, developing, implementing, and evaluating measures that address current and future oral health challenges; the kind of public and population health leaders who might one day organize and attend summits such as Exploring Global Strategies to Promote Oral Health in the WHO African Region, co-organized by CIGOH and the WHO this past November in Nairobi.
The Center is primed for potential growth, says Glick, who noted that due to the success of the Nairobi convention, plans are already underway to convene a similar summit for the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region. While Glick acknowledges it’s an ambitious endeavor given the region’s complex cultural and political topography, he’s confident that his team is more than up to the challenge. “Garry and Kathy recognize the positive impacts of oral health measures and the growing need for a unified approach. Thanks to their generosity, we’ve already been able to build a very strong foundation for these efforts,” Glick points out. “There’s a lot of work to be done, and CIGOH is committed to advancing global change.”
