Oral health can be a driver of the UK health transformation agenda.

Oral health is a critical yet underutilised lever for health system transformation in the UK. Despite being among the most prevalent noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), oral conditions remain dominated by costly, intervention-based care models. The World Health Organization's Global Oral Health Action Plan (2023-2030) and recent UK health reform agendas present an opportunity to embed oral health within primary care and universal health coverage frameworks. This paper argues for a paradigm shift toward prevention, integration, and equity, addressing shared risk factors across NCDs through team-based, community-oriented models. Tackling social determinants of health - education, housing, nutrition, and income - offers the greatest potential to reduce disease burden and improve wellbeing. Evidence from Scotland's Childsmile Programme demonstrates the cost-effectiveness of prevention strategies and encompass workforce and remuneration reforms. Social prescribing and behaviour-change interventions will be essential to operationalise the health transformation agenda. Technology, including artificial intelligence and genomics, can accelerate progress toward precision prevention, environmentally friendly and sustainable systems. Trans-sectoral community-based prevention integrating disciplines and workforce will improve oral and general health and wellbeing and has become both a social and economic imperative, requiring political will, collaborative action of the both the oral health professional workforce and their medical and social service counterparts, with comparable modifications in their respective health professions curricula, building on the research evidence to guide actions. The voices of civil society will be necessary to reinforce and build the social will to impact political decision-making.