3-4 Minute Read
On June 4-5, 2026, clinicians, advocates, students, policymakers and public health professionals gathered in Austin for the Texas Oral Health Coalition (TxOHC) 2026 Summit. The theme, Reignite, Rebuild, Reimagine: Oral Health for All, captured a coalition mid-transition. TxOHC held the summit as it settles into a new organizational home at the Texas Health Institute. The Summit offered attendees a moment to take stock of where oral health in Texas stands and where it needs to go next.
Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, MD, MPH, headlined the two days as keynote speaker for a plenary titled “Protecting Public Health: Prevention & Beyond.” His session made the case that better oral health outcomes take more than clinical fixes. Trust, communication, innovation and community partnerships all have to move together. Attendees left the session with a challenge as much as a takeaway: to treat today’s obstacles as a reason to rethink systems rather than a reason to stall.
Adams’ keynote set the tone for three other plenaries that pushed on the same idea from different angles. One session made the case for medical-dental integration as a necessary strategy, not a future aspiration, for improving outcomes and controlling costs. Another widened the lens to oral health’s place in whole-person health broadly. A third focused on rural Texas, where provider shortages and geography still stand between patients and care. Panelists pointed to workforce investment and stronger ties to primary care as the path forward.
Beyond the plenaries, the summit ran 15 breakout sessions and 7 poster presentations covering a wide range of topics, including community health worker models tying medical and dental care together, mobile clinics, orofacial pain management, HPV vaccine integration, poverty simulations for health professional students, new research on the oral health workforce pipeline, and PFAS exposure from dental products. Eleven exhibitors and two networking events, including an evening reception, rounded out a schedule built as much for relationship-building as for content.
That relationship-building seemed to land. Attendees repeatedly pointed to the connections they made and the ideas they picked up as the summit’s biggest value. Several mentioned specific breakout sessions they planned to follow up on, and one presenter said the experience made them eager to come back for future TxOHC events. It’s the kind of feedback that reflects the summit’s real goal, not just delivering information, but reigniting the relationships that turn shared ideas into shared action.
For a network like ANOHC, TxOHC’s summit is a good example of what a member coalition can do when it treats a moment of organizational change as an opportunity rather than a setback. A new institutional home, a national-caliber keynote speaker, and a packed agenda of practical, Texas-specific solutions added up to a summit that didn’t just mark a milestone, it built momentum for the work still ahead.
FAQ
What is the Texas Oral Health Coalition (TxOHC)?
TxOHC is Texas’s statewide oral health coalition and a member of ANOHC. It now operates under the Texas Health Institute and works to advance oral health access, prevention and policy across the state.
Who was the keynote speaker at the 2026 TxOHC Summit?
Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, MD, MPH, delivered the keynote plenary, Protecting Public Health: Prevention & Beyond, on the connection between prevention, trust and community partnership in improving oral health outcomes.
What topics did the summit cover?
The two-day summit in Austin featured four plenaries and 15 breakout sessions on topics including medical-dental integration, rural care delivery, workforce development, community health worker models and oral health prevention, alongside 7 research poster presentations.
How does TxOHC’s summit connect to ANOHC’s broader network?
Like other ANOHC member coalitions, TxOHC uses statewide convenings to build the cross-sector relationships, among clinicians, policymakers, educators and community organizations, that turn shared research and ideas into coordinated advocacy.
Read the full summit outcomes report at txohc.org.
