Delivering her inaugural professorial lecture "In and Out of the Mouths of Babes" at the university last night, Prof Drummond said more needed to be done to decrease the levels of caries or tooth decay among New Zealand's children.
This was shown by the fact that since 2000 the rates at which tooth decay had declined among New Zealand children had slowed and even increased in some groups.
She said it was also worrying that, as of 2010, 42.8% of all 5-year-olds and 61.7% of Maori children had suffered from tooth decay.
In order to remedy these statistics more needed to be invested in the Community Oral Health Care Service, which replaced the old school-based model in 2006.
"Unless the new service really becomes a community oral health service with a full dental team and addresses the oral health of parents as well, it will remain almost impossible to decrease dental decay in high risk children."
Children also needed to be seen at a younger age, so problems could be picked up before they got worse.
"Oral health promotion and care need to be introduced with active involvement of parents of children from at least 1 year of age,"she said.
Another area of concern was the lack of fluoridation in many areas of New Zealand, which she said led to higher rates of tooth decay.
The difference fluoridation made could be seen in a study which showed children at age 5 in Mosgiel - where there was low fluoridation - were 3.67 times more likely to have required dental care serious enough to require general anaesthesia than children in Dunedin, which had fluoridation.
Prof Drummond was also completing research which showed the severity of decay was "always higher" in low fluoride areas.
Drawing on more than 30 years of working on children's teeth, Prof Drummond said she had learnt that when children were suffering from tooth decay it affected the whole family.
"If you have got a child that has got toothache constantly everybody in the family is affected, the mum gets grumpy, everybody loses sleep."
