Kakuhiro Fukai, D.D.S., Ph.D., is director of the Fukai Institute of Health Science (Japan), visiting professor at Kanagawa Dental University, and visiting researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Public Health. He also serves as chair of FDI’s Oral Health for Ageing Population Task Team (2015-2019, 2021-2024). In addition, he has served as director of Japan Dental Association and executive director of the 8020 Promotion Foundation (2013-2019). He has also maintained a private dental practice for the past thirty years.
Performing all of these roles simultaneously has provided him with practical experience and academic expertise at both the global and local level and in all stages of the evidence-policy-practice-evaluation cycle. His research activities have focused on global oral health, the link between oral and systemic health, and healthy longevity. He has published over 300 research articles and 50 books on oral health promotion. Representative of his work is a long-term cohort study of Japanese community residents’ oral health and longevity initiated in 1987, which remains ongoing. He also edited The Current Evidence of Dental Care and Oral Health for Achieving Healthy Longevity in an Aging Society (Japan Dental Association, 2015), the most thorough and globally comprehensive review of its kind. His social contributions also include annual visits to Nepal for the past thirty years to conduct community health and oral health promotion activities with the Association of Dental Cooperation in Nepal, of which he currently serves as president.