NHS dentistry and oral health update - A focus on National Smile Month

In this month's bulletin, Jason Wong, Chief Dental Officer for England, focuses on celebrating National Smile Month. OCDO England are delighted to be collaborating with the Oral Health Foundation (OHF), the body responsible for organising the awareness month:

"National Smile Month, 12 May to 12 June 2025, is a charity campaign that champions good oral health. This year the campaign is raising awareness of the powerful connection between diet and oral health. Diet plays a crucial role in maintaining a healthy smile and we want to ensure that our patients and colleagues are making the correct choices that promote oral health every day.

A person's oral health is crucial to their overall wellbeing. For some, maintaining a healthy smile can be simple, but for many it can be very difficult. Despite improvements in oral health over the last 40 years at population level, inequalities continue to persist. Please support the campaign. Sharing the key messages and resources will help to reach communities where oral disease is far too common and make a positive difference in the oral health of millions of people. 

We were pleased to have hosted the first CDO webinar on 8 May, where we shared recent developments across the sector, including the publication of the unscheduled urgent and non-urgent dental care guidance. This guidance has been released in the form of a national service specification and clinical guidance document.

The documents will help to facilitate the local commissioning and delivery of unscheduled dental care services in England, supporting the governments manifesto commitment to deliver 700,000 additional urgent dental care appointments in 2025/26. It is expected, where feasible, that any new services are commissioned to this guidance. There is more information on both the webinar and the guidance further down this bulletin.

Finally, I would like to thank all colleagues working across dentistry and oral health for your continued hard work and diligence in providing care to our patients."

Read the full NHS dentistry and oral health update.