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Overview
Clinical Preventive Dentistry Leadership Conference

ADVANCING TRULY PREVENTIVE DENTISTRY

Dental caries is now well understood to be a truly preventable disease.  Early carious enamel lesions are not only preventable but also reversible via remineralization.  Just as prevention of primary caries has been widely adopted clinically, so should remineralization of early carious lesions.

From December 11-13, 2002 Procter & Gamble hosted the Clinical Preventive Dentistry Leadership Conference at its’ Health Care Research Center outside of Cincinnati, OH.  The conference aimed to incorporate the remineralization and evaluation over time of early carious lesions into the clinical management process.  Conference attendees included faculty from every dental school in the U.S. and Canada.  The conference offered these educators the opportunity to interact with their peers to discuss the barriers to change in teaching clinical preventive dentistry and to identify possible solutions.

Goals and objectives of the conference included the following:

	To concisely summarize the current scientific knowledge of the biology, mineralogy, and health behaviors of dental caries.
	To develop awareness of the importance of relating caries etiology to successful prevention and remineralization approaches in specific individual cases.
	To determine how prevention and remineralization of caries can efficiently and effectively be implemented in clinical teaching and to facilitate longitudinal observation and outcomes assessment.
	Identify the barriers systematically and plan to implement scientifically justified changes in clinical teaching and ultimately the practice of preventive dentistry.

Listed below are the featured scientific speakers who presented at the conference:

	Dushanka V. Kleinman, DDS, MScD, Assistant Surgeon General and Chief Dental Officer, USPHS; Deputy Director, NIDCR
	George K. Stookey, MSD, PhD, Associate Director, Exploratory Research , Oral Health Research Institute; Distinguished Professor of Preventive and Community Dentistry, Indiana University School of Dentistry
	John D.B. Featherstone, MSc, PhD, Chair, Department of Preventive & Restorative Dental Sciences, University of California, San Francisco
	Carole A. Palmer, EdD, RD, Professor and Head of the Division of Nutrition and Oral Health Promotion, Tufts University School of Dental Medicine

Following the scientific sessions, clinical preventive dentistry models were presented by the following individuals:

	Vladimir Spolsky, DMD, MPH, Associate Professor Division of Public Health and Community Dentistry, UCLA School of Dentistry (External Clinical Teaching Model)
	Michele Henshaw, DDS, MPH, Assistant Professor and Director of Community Health Programs, Boston University School of Dental Medicine (General Practice Model)
	Chris Clark, DDS, MPH, Professor and Chair of Community and Preventive Dentistry, University of British Columbia, Faculty of Dentistry (Problem Based Teaching and Learning Model)
	Nancy Hudepohl, PhD, Educational Development Specialist, Division of Educational Research & Development, University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio (Internal Oral Health Assessment and Caries Risk Model)

Attendees then participated in the following workshops:

	Pre-Conference Survey Results ( Click here to view slides ), (Special thank you to Cynthia Olney, PhD, Academic Information Services, UTHSCSA School of Dentistry, for developing the pre-conference survey.
	Clinical Preventive Dentistry Models:  Participants shared information on how clinical preventive dentistry is currently taught and implemented at their corresponding schools.
	Planning a Clinical Preventive Dentistry Teaching Program:  The goal of this workshop was to create or modify an individual plan to improve upon the current teaching of clinical caries prevention at their school.  Individual plans were systematically developed using the The Fifth Discipline, The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization by P.M. Senge. (Click here to view Senge's "Systems Thinking" Worksheet)

Procter & Gamble would like to acknowledge and thank the following individuals for organizing and developing the conference.

	John Brown, BDS, PhD, Professor and Chairman, Department of Community Dentistry, UTHSC School of Dentistry at San Antonio
	Nancy C. Hudepohl, PhD, Educational Specialist, Academic Informatics Services UTHSC San Antonio
	Vladimir Spolsky, DMD, MPH, Associate Professor Division of Public Health and Community Dentistry, UCLA School of Dentistry
	Raul I. Garcia, DMD, M Med Sc., Professor and Chairman, Department of Health Policy & Health Services Research, Boston University Goldman School of Dental Medicine

Without their dedication and passionate interest in clinical prevention this conference would not have been possible.

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