Advocacy :: Advocacy
Advocacy is one of Dentaid’s four major strategic priorities for improving oral health for disadvantaged communities around the world.
A key part of Dentaid’s overall strategy is to campaign and lobby on behalf of individuals and communities to address the causes of poor oral health and to promote oral health by influencing the decisions of governments, companies, groups and individuals whose policies or actions affect the oral health of the people.
Dentaid’s efforts in this area of work, whilst often unglamorous, complex and time consuming, probably have as much potential to improve oral health globally than the charity introducing 1,000 school toothbrushing programmes or helping train 20,000 dental workers.
Oral health, as with all sectors of healthcare, is political and heavily influenced by the behaviour and interests of governments and commercial organisations in particular. With few heavyweight advocates, oral health in middle and low-income countries has often been forgotten and ignored by governments, whilst the behaviour of global multi-national companies, who have a significant influence on oral health through their products, has been unchecked.
Dentaid is involved in a wide-range of advocacy campaigns on local, national and international issues and scales.