Following the 2024 general election, the prime minister has appointed Wes Streeting, MP for Ilford North, as secretary of state for health and social care.
The communication outlines the BSPD’s commitment to work with the new Labour government on its pledge to “reduce oral health inequalities” amongst “the nation’s most vulnerable”.
Letter to secretary of state for health and social care
10 July 2024
Dear Secretary of State,
The British Society of Paediatric Dentistry (BSPD www.bspd.co.uk) warmly welcomes you to your new appointment as the UK’s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care.
As the President of BSPD, I am available, along with our society’s members to offer our expert guidance on what is needed to address the current crisis in paediatric dentistry in the UK. BSPD’s clinicians and academics are the leading authority in children’s oral health and best placed to advise on the most effective interventions. We are the expert voice of children’s oral health.
In February, we issued our Blueprint for oral health recovery – and were pleased to see some of this reflected in your manifesto, plus the specific interest you have shown in children’s oral health. You and Sir Keir have, on multiple occasions talked about your intentions to have a focus on children’s oral health. Now that you have been successful at the polls, we are ready to help you deliver on these pledges.
Targeted supervised toothbrushing in schools is a great start, but we need your ambition to go beyond this. Wider system reform is critical to trigger and sustain change. We need to move paediatric dentistry services towards early access and preventatively-focused care. As part of this, we should also ensure that each child has a ‘dental home’ – an ongoing relationship with an oral healthcare team.
We hope that as a government which has committed to dental system reform, you will engage with clinical leaders, including representatives from BSPD as part of these discussions. Prevention has to be the focus with policies like community water fluoridation in areas of high dental decay going some way to help. Our ask is for targeted, evidence-based interventions to reduce oral health inequalities.
Please do reach out to me at president@bspd.co.uk so that our society’s members can support you to influence a robust dental recovery plan to get oral health in the UK back on its feet – and in particular address the needs of the nation’s most vulnerable.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Paula Waterhouse, President, BSPD