Public Health

What is Public Health

Public health is about protecting and improving the health of whole communities, not just the patient in the chair. Oral health is part of general health. Many oral diseases are preventable, and the same risk factors (sugar, tobacco, alcohol) are behind other non-communicable diseases. As future dentists, students are in a unique position to raise awareness, encourage prevention and early detection, and help reduce inequalities in access to care across Europe.

Who is the Public Health Officer?

The Public Health Officer is the member of the EDSA team who coordinates all of EDSA’s public health and prevention activities.

The Public Health Officer:

Leads the Public Health team, together with the Co-Leads
Coordinates a network of Prevention Officers from member associations across
Europe, who bring campaigns to their own universities and countries
Works with the other EDSA officers and with our sponsors and partners to turn ideas
into concrete projects.

Our Goals

Raise awareness of oral health and its link with general health among the public and students.
Promote prevention and early detection, for example oral cancer screening and mouth self-examination.
Write and keep up to date the EDSA Preventive Calendar, the yearly list of awareness days and months we celebrate with ready-to-use content.
Organise European campaigns and awareness days, with a common message shared by students in every member country.
Empower dental students to lead prevention activities in their own faculties and communities.
Build connections with other EDSA officers, sponsors and partner organisations.

Campaigns and Awareness Days:

Awareness days last one day in the Preventive Calendar. We share educational posts, stories and short messages to spread a key message on a specific topic, and everyone can share the content.
Campaigns last several weeks or months. They are structured projects with several activities, aimed at changing habits, involving universities and reaching new audiences; Prevention Officers, universities and partners actively organise events.

EDSA Pereventive Calender

EDSA_Preventive_Calendar_2026-2027.docx

Our Main Campaigns

Make Sense Campaign

Head and Neck Cancer Awareness campaign lead by our Prevention Officer aimed at promoting early detection and the necessity of cancer screening by dentists. Every year, throughout the annual Awareness Week we post educational content on our social media platforms. These posts generate over 35,000 views every year and engage with new audiences. Building upon the Make Sense framework, EDSA has designed a project to facilitate patient screenings and awareness events at university dental clinics.