The professional home for dental public health since 1937

Our story

AAPHD was founded in July 1937 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by a group of state dental directors — just two years after the Social Security Act of 1935 first made federal funds available to states for public health work, including child dental services. The new association gave state dental directors a forum to compare notes as a brand-new field of practice took shape.

Early milestones followed quickly. The Journal of Public Health Dentistry published its first issue in 1941 and is still in print today. In the late 1940s, AAPHD became one of the first national health organizations to affirm support for community water fluoridation, drawing on evidence from the landmark Grand Rapids and Newburgh trials — an early example of the Association translating science into population-level policy.

The American Board of Dental Public Health was incorporated in 1950, and a year later the American Dental Association formally recognized dental public health as a dental specialty. The first AAPHD student chapter launched in 2009; today more than 40 chapters connect predoctoral and graduate students to the specialty.

A 2014 governance overhaul created the four Councils that now anchor the Association's work — Educational Affairs, Practice & Workforce, Policy & Advocacy, and Scientific Information. Nine decades on, the founding spirit holds: a community of professionals advancing total health through oral health.