The Alliance for a Cavity-Free Future, a non-profitable charitable organisation, is led by dental experts who have joined forces to help implement changes to dental health practices across the globe. The aim of the Alliance, is to promote initiatives to stop the development and progression of tooth decay in order to move towards a Cavity-Free Future for everyone. To achieve this goal, the Alliance believes that collaborative action is required to raise awareness of dental caries (tooth decay) and positively influence people’s dental health habits.
The Alliance for a Cavity-Free Future was built in collaboration with a worldwide panel of dental experts. The Alliance’s goal is to drive global collaborative action through partnerships with a range of stakeholders from dental health professionals to local public policy and education communities, to the general public. It is sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive Company, which supports improved oral health through its partnerships with the dental profession and government and public health agencies.
In July 2013, the ACFF announced the launch of a new European Chapter, to bring together experts in dentistry and public health to create a collaborative focus for the implementation of key changes in dental health practices across Europe.
European Chapter Goals
Overall goal and mission
Every child born across Europe in 2026 and thereafter should stay cavity-free during their lifetime
Goal 1
Ensure that appropriate caries prevention and management can be implemented across Europe. This can be achieved by:
- Engaging with broad range of education bodies and health disciplines across Europe to adopt the approach and mindset of ‘caries as a continuum’
- Facilitating the rollout of the European Core Curriculum in Cariology in dental schools across Europe to ensure a comprehensive education for the importance of caries prevention and management is delivered to the next generation of dental teams as well as to continuing education
- Supporting a uniform and harmonised core teaching on caries in paediatric dentistry
- Supporting the promotion and implementation of a caries classification management system for dental professionals such as ICCMS™
- Facilitating discussions to ensure that remuneration systems support caries prevention and control without perverse incentives
Goal 2
Work collaboratively to achieve a reduction in caries inequality within and across European States in the context of both oral and general health
This can be achieved by:
- Facilitating the creation and regular update of an epidemiological map of the caries prevalence and distribution landscape in Europe
- Identifying and using the most suitable metrics to assess and monitor reduction in caries inequality and associated risk factors, without health detriment
- Understanding the broader social determinants of health and oral health
- Challenging key policy makers to facilitate health promotion interventions in caries prevention and management and support regional implementation across Europe.