Reflections from the PHAA Preventive Health Conference 2026

Author: Joanna Le, Co-Founder

This month, our team had the opportunity to attend the Public Health Association of Australia’s Preventive Health Conference in Nipaluna/Hobart.

It was an invaluable couple of days full of honest conversations, innovative ideas, and a shared focus on improving health equity across Australia.

The conference opened with a welcome reception hosted by St Luke’s, bringing together people from across public health, research, government, advocacy, community health and prevention.

It was a great way to reconnect with colleagues and friends, meet new people working in the preventive health space, and hear about the many different ways people from across sectors are working to prevent illness and support healthier communities.

As a young organisation, we’re always grateful for these opportunities to listen, learn and build relationships. We know that prevention work is never done in isolation, it really relies on collaboration and community connections.

Our Chair and Co-Founder, Dr Alexandra Jones, presented on how digital tools can help bring strengths-based, trauma-informed preventive oral health support into the services communities already know and trust.

Her presentation explored a simple but important idea, that preventive oral health support can happen almost anywhere!

It can begin in a community service, at a general health check, or in a conversation with a trusted support person.

It could be facilitated by a digital tool that helps someone understand what is happening in their mouth without shame or judgement, or a practical resource that gives someone the confidence to take the next small step.

Alex spoke about the opportunity to use digital tools to make preventive oral health more accessible, personal and connected to people’s everyday lives. This is particularly important for people who face barriers to dental care, including cost, geography, fear, stigma, disability, and past experiences of trauma.

The presentation also touched on how preventive oral health care can be a catalyst for transformational change in our overall health and wellbeing.

When people feel more confident caring for their mouth, they may also feel more able to care for other parts of their health. When pain, shame and fear reduce, people can feel more connected, more active, and more in control. And when oral health is supported early, we can help prevent avoidable infections, hospitalisations and broader health impacts.

For the team at FRED, the heart of our work is about helping people access the information and support they need to improve and maintain their oral health, in ways that feel safe, practical and empowering.

A key reflection from the conference was just how deeply oral health connects with so many issues already sitting at the centre of preventive health.

Whether we are talking about diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, nutrition, overweight and obesity, mental health, ageing, smoking, alcohol use or social connection, oral health is part of the picture.

And yet, Australia’s health system still often treats the mouth as separate from the rest of the body.

Every year, more than 80,000 people in Australia are hospitalised for preventable dental conditions. Dental infection and disease are the largest cause of potentially preventable hospitalisations in Australia.

But it doesn’t have to be this way, we know what works to prevent oral disease. The challenge is making that knowledge accessible, relevant and useful to the people and communities who need it most.

One of the highlights of the conference was hearing from the CEOs of Australia’s preventive health agencies, who shared their strategies, priorities and vision for the future.

Their reflections made clear that Australia’s prevention sector is ambitious, skilled and deeply committed. There is strong leadership across the country, and a growing recognition that prevention needs to be valued as essential health infrastructure.

At the same time, the challenges are real.

Across the sector, organisations are navigating a difficult funding environment. Prevention is often expected to deliver long-term outcomes while working within short-term funding cycles. Many organisations are being asked to respond to increasingly complex health and social challenges with limited resources.

That tension was felt throughout the conference, but so was the opportunity.

If there was one theme that stayed with us, it was the power of collaboration.

The scale of the challenges we face in chronic disease, health inequity, climate impacts, cost of living pressures, mental health, ageing, and access to care cannot be addressed by any one organisation, sector or discipline alone.

We need governments, communities, researchers, health services, lived experience leaders, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations, community-controlled organisations, the for purpose sector, and advocates working together.

We also need to listen deeply to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities, who have long understood health as relational, cultural, collective and connected to Country.

For us, this means continuing to build partnerships that can help bring oral health into the places where prevention is already happening, like in community services, primary care, aged care, disability services, family services, regional and remote settings, and digital spaces.

We left Nipaluna/Hobart feeling energised, grateful and clear about the work ahead.

Oral health is part of how people eat, speak, learn, work, connect, age and live well. If Australia is serious about prevention, then oral health needs to be part of the conversation.

And if we want oral health prevention to work, it must be strengths-based, trauma-informed, culturally safe, practical and designed with communities.

Thank you to the Public Health Association of Australia for creating space for these conversations, to St Luke’s for hosting the welcome reception, and to everyone who shared their insights, questions and encouragement with us throughout the conference.

We’re excited to keep building on the connections sparked in Nipaluna/Hobart, and to keep working towards a future where everyone can enjoy good oral health and the many benefits it brings.