Addressing Oral Health Inequities, Access to Care, Knowledge, and Behaviors

Oral health is essential to overall health (1), and dental public health is a field of public health and a specialized field of dentistry that focuses on improving access to oral health care and understanding the factors that contribute to improving oral health from a population health perspective (2). This collection of articles in Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD), “Oral Health Behaviors and Availability of Dental Services Among Children and Adults,” features 8 articles that discuss contemporary dental public health challenges and opportunities. These include inequities in access to dental care, disparities in the prevalence of oral disease, risk behaviors related to oral disease, the relationship between oral health and chronic diseases, and the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on oral health.