At a time when domestic budgets are constrained, the question arises about why a nation needs to invest in global health or even research on global health when its own population’s health is in any given nation’s first interest. The major challenge for any public health professional is to tackle this broad range of risk factors in concert with change leaders and agents in sectors of society within and external to the health sector. Investigators continue to focus on the populations where they, the researchers, live and work. Save the expense involved, the principle of international collaborative research partnerships, characterized by multiple country sites where there is ownership of data by all partners, is a governing tenet to consider going forward. the over-arching issue is how can oral health researchers contribute substantially and purposefully to reducing not only oral health inequalities, general health inequalities but reduce poverty and access to full social and economic participation in society.