In 2016, Dr Phuong Tran was a medical student on placement in Camperdown, a small rural town about 200km from Melbourne, when she noticed that many of the children attending the local GP surgery where she worked had bad tooth decay.

“It shocked me a little. I’d expected to see the familiar issues around obesity and diabetes in the community but not so much poor oral health in kids so young,” she says.

As part of her Deakin University medical degree, she was required to make a presentation on community health to the leaders of the local council and health services.

“In preparation, I started doing some research, but the more research I did, I came to realise, to my surprise, that the water supply in the town and the surrounding areas wasn’t fluoridated.