The Department of Health (DoH) has recently announced the appointment of Sue Gregory as new Deputy Chief Dental Officer (CDO) for England. Sue will replace Tony Jenner who is leaving after six years. Her appointment will take effect in January 2009.

Sue's interest in dental public health was sparked when working with children and adults with special needs, her wish being to be able to create change that would improve their chances of oral health. Currently consultant in dental public health to four primary care trusts (PCTs) across Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, she is a past President of both the British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry and the British Society of Disability and Oral Health.

Sue sees dental public health and improving oral health as core to her role and during her time as Deputy CDO she will be working towards building on the foundations that Tony Jenner made across a wide range of areas. 'Choosing better oral health and its accompanying suite of documents have moved the focus on improving oral health right up the agenda. I was fortunate to be involved in one of these documents, chairing the working group that produced the toolkit Delivering better oral health, and it is very exciting to see how it is being adopted in some areas' she said.

The shortage of NHS dentists and poor access to NHS dental care is something that Sue sees will be combated by increased numbers of dentists graduating from UK dental schools next year. 'The Department of Health needs to continue to support PCTs and dentists working together to grow services. DoH has made unprecedented levels of investment over the last year which is expected to continue, providing the resources to employ the expansion of not only dentists, but the whole dental team. I can use my experience of working within PCTs to help improve commissioning of dental services in a practical and constructive way.'

She adds that the critics of the dental contract have not seen its flexibility. 'Now that the contract has been in place for nearly three years there seems to be a will to move forward rather than look back. It is impossible to have a commissioned system without agreed activity and contract value figures. Although the transition process was very rigid, the contract is actually very flexible. There is a challenge to achieve improved access and improved services and outcomes to patients and some PCTs are utilising the contract flexibility to achieve this. Although it is starting to happen now it is clearly not happening quickly enough or widely enough and we need to get both sides to understand that and work together.'

Sue believes that communication and the development of good working relationships are key in delivering change, in particular the relationship between the centre and local dentists, which she thinks are now much better than they were through the transition period. 'I think it is really important that the relationship between the Department and the dental representative organisations also improves and I will be using my connections to further that aim.'