A key aim of the British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry (BASCD's) Autumn scientific conference is the benefits and challenges of working with communities to improve oral health.

Inequalities in oral health is a repeated concern in many parts of the country. A lot of emphasis has been given to strategies which focus on improving the behaviour of individual patients, and increasingly on large scale media campaigns, policy actions etc as ways to tackle the problem.

The conference will take place on 16 November 2017 at the Cavendish conference centre in London. Sir Harry Burns, a former Chief Medical Officer for Scotland until 2014 and now Professor of Global Public Health at Strathclyde University, will be the keynote speaker. He draws on his clinical experience working with patients in the east end of Glasgow to give an insight into the complex inter-relationships between social and economic status and illness, and has been particularly prominent in advocating for 'co-producing' health and using assets which are present, even in deprived areas.

This will be followed by a presentation by Professor Lorna Macpherson from the University of Glasgow who will outline what we know about community-level approaches to tackling oral health inequalities. There will then be an example of a community-based programme where an oral health component is embedded within a wider initiative targeting young families, and which uses a model of community volunteers as mentors.

For more information and to register, visit http://www.bascd.org/.