A Letter from iADH President Gustavo Molina
1st March 2023
Our Paris meeting was so inspiring that it printed a higher meaning for resuming our activities when we returned to our respective working posts.
The message was straight forward: We should intensify our efforts for equity in access to and provision of oral care, for and together with people with disabilities.
There are different paths that may lead us towards this goal. Actually, all of them are important, and that is why collaborative work is essential.
We are committed to advocate for this equity by means of every resource we may develop for that purpose. Research and Education are two pillars that will help us to raise the bar.
Therefore, as members of the Executive Board and through the Education Committee and the Scientific/Research Committee, we made significant steps to install this conceptual framework among our peers in the Dental Profession.
Regarding Education, Prof. Alison Dougall and Prof. Jacobo Limeres participated in a webinar organized by Dentsply Sirona and broadcasted from Germany, to discuss the importance of embedding Special Care Dentistry in the undergraduate curricula of Dental faculties. Many participants from around the world participated in this successful event, which allowed iADH to showcase its achievements in the last 10 years concerning the development and implementation of the iADH undergraduate curricula and posgraduate recommendations. I would personally like to thank and congratulate Alison and Jacobo for all their efforts.
Aligned with these presentations, the topic seemed to be also relevant for the 2022 SEAADE Education meeting in Siem Reap, Cambodia. A pre-congress workshop had been organized to have an open discussion among South East Asian Association of Dental Education members to update the state of the art regarding dental training of undergraduates related to SCD as well as the provision of care for people with disabilities in these countries. Strong recommendation to integrate and implement SCD at the undergraduate level was the conclusion of the workshop, handing over this task to the Deans of the respective dental schools and faculties. Dr. Siti Zaleha and myself were among the participants and promoted the use of the iADH curricula for guidance.
Although IADH thinks globally, each of our endeavors are culturally sensitive. However, we are determined that achieving a basic package of learning outcomes in SCD at the undergraduate level must be a global action, and it should be a part of all training.
That is why we wanted to go beyond and we submitted a proposal to the IADR (International Association of Dental Research) for a symposium in Bogotá, Colombia 2023. “Promoting and implementing Special Care Dentistry (SCD) in the curricula” has been approved and will be advertised to further the discussion at one of the main stages in the dental science.
As I mentioned before, Research is the other pillar beside Education. I was greatly surprised to see in Paris many interesting ongoing projects that prove that equal treatment outcomes for people with disabilities are possible. This motivated the submission of a second proposal to IADR to showcase these advances in Dentistry that meet our patients’ needs through quality treatment options. The eclectic “Achieving UNCRPD through research, person-centred-care with IADR and iADH” symposium organized by Caoimhin Mac Giolla Phadraig and myself will boost the presence of iADH in this prestigious international dental meeting, where quality is a pre/requirement to be accepted.
Other exciting projects are in the process of being launched, such as the development of the iADH Universal Case-Mix tool. the launch of “The Big Rethink” campaign being led by our Oral B partner and also an exciting partnership project with Wiley regarding an online learning programme to educ
ate Medical Teams around Disability and Oral Health. I hope to give more details on this for our next communication.
For now, I would like to wish you all the best and that this crazy ever-changing world may find us pursuing our dreams in the coming year.
Yours sincerely,
Gustavo