The Santa Fe Group partnered with Nova Southeastern University to identify and establish best practices and resources to train health care providers to care for the unique needs and challenges of the elder population’s oral health. Over 75 interdisciplinary thought leaders participated in this event. Presentation hand-outs can be downloaded from …. PLEASE LINK DOCUMENTS FROM http://santafegroup.org/publications.html

The Santa Fe Group partnered with Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, New York Academy of Medicine, and the Center for Health Professionals to convene a conference to explore ways to expand access to oral health care in America and develop priority recommendations toward that end. Full meeting summary is available… PLEASE LINK HERE (currently on http://santafegroup.org/documents/ExpandingAccesstoPrimaryCare_WorkforceModelsMeetingSummary2008.pdf)

The Santa Fe Group hosted an educational conference  to discuss how best to meet the needs of the increasing elderly population and identify necessary actions to improve their oral health.  Various field experts served as panelists and presented their information to the Santa Fe Group members and conference participants.  The panel topics included:

• Use of Dental Services & Quality of Life
• Care Delivery Systems for Aging Adults
• Challenges for Geriatric Dental Education
• Financing Mechanisms for Senior Dental Market

The exchange of knowledge and shared experiences proved enlightening about the critical issue of meeting the oral health needs of the growing elderly population.  For complete copies of presentations and papers from this conference, see (PLEASE LINK RESPECTIVE DOCUMENTS ON http://santafegroup.org/publications.html)

The Life of a Child: The Role of Family and Community in Children’s Oral Health was convened in Los Angeles, California by the Santa Fe Group and hosted by the University of Southern California School of Dentistry. Supported by an interested group of professional organizations and businesses, this conference was designed to widen the lens on children’s health disparities by engaging the broader range of biological, environmental, social and cultural determinants impacting children’s health and well-being, including their oral health.

Specifically the purpose of this conference was to provide a scientific framework for children’s oral and general health that recognizes their direct relationship to the family and community environments, and to consider models for health promotion that build on community assets and social capital. The conference invited the interdisciplinary audience to participate in experiential learning at community sites that exposed them directly to factors contributing to health disparities. Children’s health outcomes result from the complex interaction of biologic determinants with sociocultural, family and community variables. Dental professional efforts to reduce oral health disparities often focus on improving access to dental care. However, this strategy alone cannot eliminate health disparities. Rising rates of early childhood caries create an urgent need to study family and community factors in oral health.

Key conference themes and insights included: 1) children’s needs and societal priorities; 2) the science of child health determinants; 3) the rapidly changing demographics of the U.S.; and 4) the importance of communities that support children and families. To eliminate children’s oral health disparities we must change paradigms to promote health, integrate oral health into other health and social programs, and empower communities. Oral health advocates have a key role in ensuring oral health is integrated into policy for children. Dental schools have a leadership role to play in expanding community partnerships and providing education in health determinants.

LINK PUBLICATIONS REFERENCED HERE:
Beyond AccessThe Role of Family and Community in Children’s Oral Health by W. Mouradian, C. Huebner, F. Ramos-Gomez, and H. Slavkin

Building Community WellnessThe Child in the Context of Family & Community by J. McCroskey

From Neurons to NeighborhoodsDeterminants of Child Wellness by M. Kipke

Getting Ready for SchoolPromoting Cognitive, Social, & Behavioral Wellness through Early Childhood Education by K. Symms-Gallagher

Building Community Wellness- the Fetal Experience and Later Health by R. Williams

Views from the NIH and Other Federal Agencies 06/12/2006 by D. Kleinman

Santa Fe Group convened a conference in San Francisco to explore what is widely perceived to be a crisis in American dental education and to plan strategies for transforming the system which trains the nation’s oral health care professionals. The ultimate objective of the conveners is to stimulate reflective thought and action on the part of dental educators and others to produce oral health professionals better equipped to deal with the health care realities they will face in the future.

Contemporary dental education remains rooted in training models developed nearly a century ago. Dental schools, in particular, struggle with curricula, enrollment practices, and faculty resources which are often poorly suited to deal with the needs of our rapidly changing society. Such factors as immigration, aging and associated chronic diseases, increasing disparity in health and access to care, and myriad others present significant challenges to dentistry today. At the same time, scientific advances in such fields as genomics, proteomics, pharmacotherapy, and systems biology are redefining the way disease is perceived, diagnosed, and treated. “How best to respond to these demands?” is the question facing dental educators today.

To begin exploration of that question, Santa Fe Group invited more than 50 leaders from the academic, corporate, governmental, professional, and funding communities. Nine external sponsors joined Santa Fe Group in sponsoring the conference, including the Brasseler USA, Colgate, Delta Dental Plan of Massachusetts, the Dental Trade Alliance, DENTSPLY, International, GC America, Henry Schein, Inc., Patterson Dental, and Procter and Gamble. Working from the generally acknowledged premise that dental education must be transformed, participants joined in nearly two days of focused discussion to develop a series of short and long-term strategic actions which could significantly alter the course of dental education.

Meeting at the Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry at the University of the Pacific, Drs. Dominick DePaola and Hal Slavkin, both Santa Fe group members, set the context for the meeting with an overview of their white paper, “The Necessity for Reform in Dental Education.” In addition, participants reviewed five topic areas from which models for dental education can be derived. Briefing papers and oral presentations on these models include:

“Community-based education: a view from the trenches,” Dr. Jack Dillenberg

“The pipeline project and social engagement,” Dr. Allan Formicola

“Technology and distributed education,” Mr. James Galbally

“Corporate funding,” Dr. Howard Landesman

“Medical-dental models in dental education,” Dr. David Nash

Calling the conference the “beginning of a revolution from within,” Santa Fe Group President, Dr. Lawrence Meskin explained that the organization wanted to act as a catalyst to influence change by providing a forum in which health care professionals, policy leaders, and decision-makers could come together in a neutral environment to share opinions freely, without concerns about institutional loyalties and constraints.”

Repeatedly, participants noted that oral health reports and educational commission studies consistently forewarned of the problems dentistry now faces. One such document is the Surgeon General’s first report on Oral Health in America, published in 2000. This report spotlighted the growing crisis in oral health care and set forth a social rationale for the sorts of actions discussed in the San Francisco conference. Calling oral diseases a “silent epidemic,” the Surgeon General’s Report documented that oral and systemic health problems are often associated and that oral diseases and disorders can compromise health and well-being over a lifetime. The Report further concluded that solutions to these problems are hindered by issues involving oral health disparities, the relative inability of the public to benefit from scientific advances, the tenacity of barriers to care for growing segments of the population, and the erosion of the dental workforce by aging and retirements. Further exacerbating the situation is the fact that the current dental education system is threatened by escalating educational costs and mounting student indebtedness.

Conference participants determined that the single most important factor responsible for the crisis in dental education is the “silo” approach so commonly found in health education. By their reliance on independent curricula, faculty, facilities, and research programs, “silos” contribute to the isolation of health professional training programs. A more effective outcome could be achieved, speakers hypothesized, if dentistry were integrated in a comprehensive, interdisciplinary health care education system.

The Santa Fe Group conference is seen as an important first step in the journey toward a broad-based national effort to overhaul dental education. “The fact that 80 percent of dental disease occurs in 20 percent of the population, that 110 million Americans lack dental insurance, and that there is a growing shortage of dentists to treat the needs of certain populations – especially children – obligates us to move quickly toward reform,” said Dr. Hal Slavkin, as he urged participants begin implementing change strategies in their home institutions and organizations.

Eyes on the future, Slavkin and other Santa Fe Group members have articulated a vision for the goal of an “ideal” oral health education system:

The mission of the oral health education system of the United States is to serve society by educating and training a diverse workforce capable of meeting the Nation’s need for oral health care. Members of this workforce should variously engage in clinical oral health care, public health practice, biomedical and health services research, education, and administration. Oral health professionals should also contribute to the fields of ethics, law, public policy, government, business, and journalism. The educational system will meet its unique responsibilities to educate and train highly competent clinical practitioners by ensuring that they acquire, and sustain throughout their careers, the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values needed for practice within interdisciplinary health care teams. These skilled health care providers must have the ability to provide complex, integrative, high-quality care for patients, families, and communities. To do less is an abrogation of the professional covenant extended to dentistry by society.