Good oral well being is crucial to our total well being, wellbeing and high quality of life.
For 50 years, Smile Month has helped individuals throughout the UK perceive find out how to care for his or her mouths, make more healthy selections and stop avoidable illness. Over that point, oral well being has improved considerably – however progress has not been shared equally.
Too many individuals nonetheless expertise the ache, discomfort and life impression of preventable oral illness. Too many communities face boundaries to care, recommendation and assist. And too usually, the system nonetheless responds after issues have developed, fairly than serving to individuals keep wholesome within the first place.
The Smile Month Prevention Pledge is a dedication to vary that.
It helps the ambition set out in our report, Oral Well being: From Therapy to Prevention, to construct a future the place prevention is positioned on the coronary heart of oral well being coverage, companies, training and on a regular basis life.
Our Pledge
I assist the Smile Month Prevention Pledge and the ambition to enhance oral well being for the subsequent era.
I consider that prevention, training and more healthy habits are important to making a future the place everybody has the chance to get pleasure from a wholesome smile.
I pledge to assist motion that helps:
- Put prevention on the centre of oral well being coverage and care.
- Scale back oral well being inequalities.
- Enhance entry to trusted recommendation, assist and companies.
- Promote more healthy diets and scale back the hurt brought on by sugar.
- Strengthen oral well being training in faculties, workplaces and communities.
- Help the total dental group to ship preventive care.
- Enhance public understanding of the hyperlinks between oral well being and common well being.
- Construct partnerships that make more healthy selections simpler for everybody.
Why prevention issues
Our report exhibits that the UK has made main progress in oral well being during the last 50 years. Fluoride toothpaste, public well being programmes, higher scientific follow and campaigns like Smile Month have all helped scale back dental illness.
However the report additionally makes clear that progress is fragile and uneven.
Oral well being inequalities stay a serious problem. Kids and adults in disadvantaged communities proceed to face larger ranges of illness, poorer entry to care and worse outcomes. NHS dentistry is below stress, whereas funding and supply fashions nonetheless too usually reward remedy extra strongly than prevention.
The problem now just isn’t whether or not prevention works. The problem is constructing methods that constantly place prevention first.
Signal the Pledge
By signing the Smile Month Prevention Pledge, you’re including your voice to a shared name for a more healthy, fairer and extra prevention-focused future.
I’m dedicated to supporting prevention, training and more healthy habits, and to serving to enhance oral well being for the subsequent era.
