This is how everyone joins the movement for change, where oral health becomes a critical part of whole-person health. Share what is working, drop a systems-level idea, or add your model. Every contribution makes the network stronger.
A story, an idea, a model: every voice adds to the record.
The Convening · June 2026
A room of leaders kicked off a movement.
From June 22 to 24, 2026, leaders from across health care, policy, education, and community practice gathered in Washington, DC for Oral Health as a Pathway to Wellness and Longevity. Together we took on one central question: what will it take for oral health to be inseparable from whole-person health? Over three days the room moved from shared stories and proof points to cross-sector design work, and finally to named commitments.
The Convening was only the beginning. What sets this apart from other meetings is what happens next. The real work begins now, carried forward by the network built here through continued collaboration, new partnerships, and concrete outputs, a cycle that runs long after the room emptied.
The current system asks people to navigate fragmentation alone.
Whole-person health transformation requires shared language, shared information flows, and simultaneous treatment of co-occurring conditions. It is technical, political, and relational work, and it cannot be done by any single profession, institution, or sector acting independently.
01
Built in pieces
The systems responsible for health, including financing, workforce, care delivery, data, and policy, operate in pieces. The cost is visible everywhere: preventable disease, deepened inequity, and avoidable cost.
02
A networked response
Transformation builds care in which no aspect of a person's well-being is treated as separate, and no community is left to navigate fragmentation alone, work that demands networked, coordinated, sustained commitment.
03
Why now
The policy and electoral landscape of 2026 and beyond can reshape financing, workforce, education, and delivery for generations. We gather by intention, to align our goals and accelerate what works.
“
We come together not to advocate for any single profession or program, but to design the conditions under which whole-person health can become the standard of care.
The Santa Fe Group
In Memoriam
Michael Alfano
DMD, PhD
Wendy Mouradian
MD, MS
This Convening was dedicated in honor of the memory of Michael Alfano, DMD, PhD, and Wendy Mouradian, MD, MS. Their expertise, leadership, and commitment to achieving health equity taught us what it takes for oral health to be inseparable from whole-person health, and the work carried forward here is theirs as much as ours.
