Published: July 2017

FDI has seen many successes in 2016 in pursuit of its goals in continuing education, membership growth, knowledge transfer, international campaigning, advocacy, as well as effective project implementation. The high point of the year was undoubtedly the adoption by the General Assembly of FDI’s new definition of oral health.

Advocacy has proved to be a real area of growth, now consolidated under the umbrella of Vision 2020. This enables us to pro-actively ensure the oral health dimension on the global health agenda and reinforce our relations with intergovernmental partners such as the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Environment Programme.

Our input and expertise has been much appreciated in the context of current discussions on the Minamata Convention on Mercury and its specific provisions for the phase-down of dental amalgam. At the international level, we have reinforced our advocacy capacity through joining forces with strategic partners such as the Noncommunicable Disease Alliance and have strengthened collaboration with other medical professions.

World Oral Health Day is going from strength to strength with an increasing number of organizations participating globally and a growing campaign reach. We can also look with satisfaction on the positive outcomes from FDI’s major project partnerships in areas such as prevention and oral health literacy, especially among children, oral health project innovation and sustainability as well as caries management and societal issues such as oral health and ageing populations.

Our World Dental Congress was a well-attended, truly international event and our Continuing Education (CE) Programme grows apace. Finally, we can welcome the new focus of IDJ on becoming the reference for international oral health, oriented towards practice-related research, international public health and inter-professional education and practice.