ACADEMIA Letters THE ANNUAL PARADE OF THE TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH AS A POTENTIAL SETTING FOR ORAL CANCER AWARENESS IN SRI LANKA: AN AVENUE TO BLEND HEALTH AND CULTURE R M S H B Medawela, Specialist trainee in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery Lecturer in Oral Medicine and Radiology Department of Oral Medicine and Periodontology, Faculty of Dental Sciences, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka D R D L Ratnayake, Specialist trainee in Community Dentistry Department of Community Dental Health, Faculty of Dental Sciences, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka Ranjith Gunathilake, Ofce of Regional Dental Surgeon, Regional Director of Health-Kandy, Kandy, Sri Lanka Health is elusive to defne, and the meaning of the word has evolved over many decades. The Oral health, as defned by the World Dental Federation (FDI), as “Oral health is multi-faceted and includes the ability to speak, smile, smell, taste, touch, chew, swallow and convey a range of emotions through facial expressions with confdence and without pain, discomfort and dis- ease of the craniofacial complex.” (1) According to the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, health is a resource for everyday life, not the objective of living. But health is challenged ev- ery day by one’s social determinants of life. Culture is a robust determinant of an individual’s lifestyle behaviours which lead to outcomes of positive or negative health(2). The efects Sri Lankan culture has in determining perceptions and expectations of health are often overlooked by Western medical models of health (3). This paper describes the experience of a unique oral cancer awareness session conducted by a group of oral healthcare professionals from the cen- tral part of Sri Lanka. The program aimed to infuence the health-related behaviours of their Academia Letters, November 2021 Corresponding Author: R M S H B Medawela, sumuduhimesha@gmail.com Citation: Medawela, R.M.S.H.B., Ratnayake, D.R.D.L., Gunathilake, R. (2021). THE ANNUAL PARADE OF THE TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH AS A POTENTIAL SETTING FOR ORAL CANCER AWARENESS IN SRI LANKA: AN AVENUE TO BLEND HEALTH AND CULTURE. Academia Letters, Article 4150. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4150. 1 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0