4th Global Oral Health & Climate Action Conference
(COP 30 Climate Conference, Brazil, Nov. 10-21, 2025)
Penn Dental Medicine has established a multi-year Global Oral Health and Climate Action Conference to promote and contribute to a consistent and coherent approach to addressing complex global challenges such as climate change but also creating opportunities for solutions through a model of sustainable dentistry.
(A model for Sustainabel Dentistry. British Dental Journal ‘Dentistry in A Changing World; from Inertia to Action’)
After a prolonged period of stability, the world is entering into an increasingly insecure, unpredictable and troubling place. Rising environmental challenges through unprecedented heat, winds, fires, heavy rains and flooding, violent storm events as well as increasing water stress are impacting public oral health services and dental practices, placing immense stress on the prevailing restorative-oriented financing model. At the same time we are witnessing social and technological transformations that are reframing patient behavior, values and expectations.
Oral healthcare professionals cannot afford to address such complex and interdependent problems from the locus of their own silo. This will necessitate that the oral health community builds a climate smart and resilient service and practice model in partnership with government, business and society. One that integrates prevention-focused care to ensure health promotion and disease treatment occur within planetary boundaries; optimizes the environmental performance of care delivery and waste management; drives innovation in business operations and dental materials; and through virtual oral healthcare systems supports community engaged and distributed services and care. This will require addressing gaps in our science and understanding through and adopting inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to research and education agendas.
The 4th Global Oral Health and Climate Action Conference provides an important opportunity for the oral health community to engage in a global discourse on climate change and creates a platform to raise awareness and knowledge about oral and planetary health, and the impact of climate change on dental research, education and practice.
