Advancing India’s oral health agenda: policy, practice and promise

Journal: The Lancet Regional Health – Southeast Asia

Oral health continues to remain a neglected public health priority in India despite the substantial preventable burden of oral diseases and their shared behavioral, environmental and commercial determinants with major non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Persistent reliance on treatment-oriented care, high out-of-pocket expenditure, inequitable distribution of the dental workforce, limited public-sector capacity, fragmented governance, inadequate financing and weak surveillance mechanisms continue to constrain equitable access to oral healthcare, particularly among rural and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations. Integrating essential oral health services – including health promotion, oral cancer screening, tobacco cessation, early diagnosis, prevention and referral – within comprehensive primary healthcare offers an important pathway to strengthen health systems and advance Universal Health Coverage (UHC).

The WHO Global Oral Health Action Plan provides a strategic framework for achieving these objectives by 2030, with emphasis on integrating oral health into primary healthcare, expanding access to essential oral health services, strengthening national policy frameworks, and improving surveillance and accountability. India’s ongoing health-system reforms, particularly Ayushman Bharat and the expansion of Health and Wellness Centres, provide a critical platform for operationalizing this integration alongside NCD prevention and management. However, translating policy commitments into sustained implementation requires stronger intersectoral coordination, evidence-informed agenda-setting, implementation capacity, financing and monitoring frameworks.

Against this backdrop, the Oral Health India Summit, jointly organized by the Institute of Public Health (IPH) and Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) on 20^th July 2026, provided a multidisciplinary platform to examine the policy and health-system dimensions of oral health in India. Bringing together policymakers, researchers, clinicians, public health practitioners, professional bodies and civil society, the summit deliberated on oral health policy and agenda-setting, dental workforce capacity and regulation, integration of oral health into primary healthcare, and the commercial determinants of oral health. Its anticipated outputs – including a policy brief for national and state-level decision-makers, an oral health policy working group, capacity-building initiatives and priorities for future research – seek to establish a coherent national implementation agenda.

Embedding oral health within UHC and primary healthcare is essential to achieving equitable, preventive and people-centered care at scale. Strengthening policy, practice, research and cross-sectoral collaboration can enable India to translate global commitments into measurable health gains and demonstrate regional leadership in advancing oral health equity.