Editorial - Oral health inequalities and the COVID-19 pandemic: time for action

Abstract

Over the last years, the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced a major public health crisis globally that societies have struggled to address irrespective of the approach followed. The different aspects of the crisis and how it has been handled from the point of view of social epidemiology, do not offer a positive reading. One key “message” has been that we are “all in it together”. This implies a socially neutral phenomenon, yet there is clear evidence of stark socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities with disproportionate burden of the pandemic among the more deprived groups in the society (Marmot, 2020). And this has taken place in the background of already well-established health inequalities that have further increased over the last decade (Marmot et al., 2020). At the same time, addressing inequalities has been a central piece of government and societal health policy objectives.