AIDPH hosted its annual colloquium “Reimagining Dental Health Through Resiliency and Community” on August 4 & 5, 2020. This colloquium was focused on strengthening our dental public community through imagining and exploring novel ideas and solutions to improve oral health equity in America.  Event speakers included experts from diverse fields to help us examine the roots of inequity in oral health and strategize solutions.

Sean Boynes, DMD, MS, Vice President of Health Improvement at the DentaQuest Partnership for Oral Health Advancement presented Merging Health Sectors to Address Structural Gaps. His presentation focused on the history of dentistry as a practice and its regulation and educational structure. He discusses how the separation of medical and dental insurance coverage, education, and the progression of the American Dental Association created the medical/dental siloes that we see today.

He talked about how there has not been a lot of progress in growing the representation of BIPOC within the dental profession and calls for change. He also discussed the “value of a dental practice” as it relates to the perceived value of the individuals that dentists are serving. It has been demonstrated that BIPOC and patients on Medicaid are perceived as less desirable. He expressed hope for creating a more holistic system, utilizing interprofessional practice models, and forging medical-dental integration.

Watch his full presentation here.

Chime in! Tell us about your experience with moving toward value-based care and holistic health systems?

Post authored by:

Caitie Skaggs | AIDPH Staff

The American Institute of Dental Public Health

programs@aidph.org