The Inaugural Global Oral Health Symposium gathers experts from medicine, public health, dentistry, economics and political science representing academic centers from Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, University of Maryland, New York University, Seoul National University as well as the World Health Organization and NGOs Solidarity Dental Foundation and Zero Noma Initiative to increase awareness about oral health, the importance of integrating the mouth to whole body health and systemic disease, global inequities regarding access to care, current WHO recommendations, as well as recognition of noma, the "face of poverty", as a neglected tropical disease.

The symposium of talks, featuring speakers with experience from Canada, the United States, Korea, Ecuador, Peru, India, Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania, is aimed for a public health audience as well as for physicians, dentists, and all healthcare workers, in-person as well as via Zoom.

The goal is not only to increase awareness to oral-medical integration from a public heath perspective, but also to build and encourage collaborations in advocacy, policy, clinical care and research with intent to produce lecture recordings, advocacy briefs, calls to action, and recommendations for future. The Hopkins community does not have an affiliated school of dental medicine and would benefit from improved understanding to the importance of oral-medical integration as well as the benefits to diverse perspectives and experience for multi-disciplinary collaborations.

This all-day symposium is organized with support from the student groups Academy Health and the Oral Health Network and partnering with the Center for Health Services and Outcomes Research as well as the Center for Global Health.