THE GLOBAL-LOCAL TENSION

In June 2023, the Cambodia National Action Plan for Oral Health was signed off by the Minister of Health, Cambodia. The approach that the team at the Oral Heatlh Bureau (Cambodia) took was to actively reach out to stakeholders at all levels using a “networking approach” as a way to generate support for implementation. There have been four action plans developed in Cambodia since 1990, the most recent in 2011. None of the plans have been able to garner significant support through the government system. This time, the Oral Health Bureau wanted to write a pragmatic action plan based on stakeholder feedback and also to use the development of the document as a way to bridge the communication gap between those writing policies in the central government and those in the provincial government who make decisions around health spendings. As well as taking local stakeholder advice into considerations, the bureau also needed to follow the recently released World health Organization Global Action Plan for Oral Health as a way to signal to the world that they were following best practice and to make the plan eligible for grant-based funding. This created tension because the local stakeholders and the global stakeholders had contrasting ideas about how certain key concepts might be grouped. It was the local stakeholders that sign off on the action plan but there needed to be a mixed funding model in order to realize the objectives and activities outlined. Dr Turton, one of OHAN’s founding members, played a key role in securing funding to support the development of the document and negotiating some of those tensions. Oral Health Action Network (OHAN) hopes to support the Oral Health Bureau of Cambodia in the coming years as it works to implement its action plan.