Watt, RichardAlsaleh, Ahmed2024-01-182024-01-182023-09-28https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14154/71236BACKGROUND Oral health inequalities remain a global health issue that has been neglected and overlooked. Its impact affect everyone in a socially graded manner where the greatest impacts are experienced by the most the marginalised, vulnerable, and disadvantaged people, making them suffer the most from oral diseases. Some preventive interventions can increase oral health inequalities rather than reducing them by favourably benefiting the most advantaged groups. This is what is known as interventiongenerated inequalities (IGIs). Considering the momentum of oral health globally and the golden opportunity for transformative policy change towards a more upstream intervention approach, it is crucial not only to focus on addressing and documenting the causes of existing oral health inequalities but also to focus on evidence-based policy interventions, to not generate more oral health inequalities and widened the gap unintentionally. AIM The aim of this project was to critically review of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Global Oral Health Action Plan (2023-2030 and World Dental Federation’s (FDI) selected oral health policy recommendations and intervention initiatives through the lens of intervention-generated inequalities METHODS This review provides timely and necessary critiques of such interventions that may increase inequalities. Specifically, it critically reviews the World Health Organisation and World Dental Federation's policy recommendations for oral health interventions through the lens of intervention-generated inequalities. RESULTS The findings of this review support the notion that support the notion that preventive individualistic downstream interventions targeting health behaviours, such as untargeted oral health education and mass media campaigns at the population level, have the risk of generating oral health inequalities. This review also highlights the potential role of public-private partnerships and the influence of corporate funding in driving and directing the focus of interventions towards downstream approaches that risk generating oral health inequalities. CONCLUSION This review has assessed how recommended, un-targeted individualistic downstream prevention interventions on a population level could adversely widen oral health inequalities. A key policy priority should be reducing oral health inequalities; therefore, a transformative upstream approach is required.73enOral health inequalitiesInterventionsThesis