Symposium to focus on oral health care workforce

On March 22, during the 41st Annual Meeting & Exhibition of the American Association for Dental Research (AADR), held in conjunction with the 36th Annual Meeting of the Canadian Association for Dental Research, a symposium titled "Building the Oral Health Care Workforce: Multipronged Research on Dental Therapy" will take place to help attendees understand opportunities for effective utilization of new workforce models in nontraditional settings within the oral health care community.

For decades, the composition of the oral health care workforce in the United States consisted of dentists, hygienists, and assistants. These traditional team members are well established and there is a common understanding of their roles within the oral health care delivery model. However, in this study with the introduction of the dental therapist in Minnesota, different opinions have been formulated regarding their role on the oral health care team and their potential to impact the delivery of oral health care.

This symposium will focus on the research base for non-dentist providers and will feature four presentations titled "Educating the Oral Workforce through Team Education: New Evidence", "Practitioner Perceptions, Attitudes, and Expectations: Baseline Findings", "Is Dental Therapy Financially Sustainable?" and "Bringing Care to the People: New Workforce Models in Nontraditional Settings in the Community."

This is a summary of sequence #33 titled "Building the Oral Health Care Workforce: Multipronged Research on Dental Therapy" to be presented by N. Lopez, C. Blue, K. Self and P. Glassman at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Dental Research. This symposium will take place at 10:45 a.m. on Thursday, March 22, 2012, in room 10 of the Tampa Convention Center.