ADEA Task Force

 
Student Pathways

Student Pathways Into Dental Education and Learner Perspectives.

Creating accessible, equitable pathways into dental education and supporting learners across the full continuum from pre-acceptance through entry into practice.

Areas of Focus:

• Exploring affordable and financially accessible options to reduce tuition cost and/or debt burden.
• Exploring admissions models and alternative pathways such as the European model, postbaccalaureate pathways, prerequisite requirement flexibility, etc.
• Exploring applicants’ readiness to adapt to and proactively navigate changes and challenges from admissions through academic and into the profession.
• Developing support systems that promote resilience, belonging and success.

 
Curriculum

Reimagining the Oral Health Care Curriculum.

Developing a standardized, learner-centric core curriculum that leverages technology, supports all oral health learners and integrates educator development and research across institutions.

Areas of Focus:

• Developing and adopting a centralized core curriculum that is maintained and regularly updated with evolving knowledge and accessible to educators across oral health education programs and schools.
• Providing training opportunities to assist educators in the implementation of new teaching, assessment and practice models that incorporate technology (e.g., AI, AR, VR, etc.).
• Developing oral health education pathways for all oral health students to initially enroll into the same shared curriculum and then transition to their specific coursework (e.g., dental, dental hygiene, dental therapy, etc.).
• Utilizing Big Data to inform evidence-based person-centered care, enhance health outcomes and promote critical thinking.
• Developing opportunities to incorporate clinical, public health, practice-based and/or translation research models.
• Including experiential interprofessional education and interprofessional collaborative practice models that may be exemplars in the practice setting.
• Developing and assessing the operational and financial implications of an asynchronous or hybrid curricular model for oral health care learners to allow for self-paced learner-centric education.
• Exploring joint university appointments and shared faculty models that create budget-neutral impact on parent institutions/schools.
• Assessing educator opportunities for change readiness to implement new teaching, assessment and practice models that incorporate technology (e.g., AI, AR, VR, etc.).
• Leveraging the impact of AI/AR/VR digital technology as well as other emerging technologies to offer exposure to infrequent clinical conditions that remain important for all students to experience in a standardized core curriculum.

 
Health Care & Clinical Education

Transforming Oral Health Care Delivery Models and Aligning Clinical Education.

Advancing value-based care, improving health information exchange, diversifying care delivery models, addressing access to care challenges and aligning clinical education with the evolving needs of varied patient populations.

Areas of Focus:

• Aligning clinical oral health education with care delivery that ensures learners train in settings at efficiency levels that reflect future practice.
• Developing alternative and diversified delivery models that include community-based models that address access-to-care challenges and/or team-based care settings that integrate various health science partners across health professions (e.g., pharmacy, rehabilitation science, nursing, public health, etc.).
• Incorporating value-based care reimbursement that shifts from volume-driven to outcomes-driven care and includes identifying benchmarks that suggest improved health over quality.
• Incorporating an accessible, integrated and standardized care infrastructure that has greater uniformity and interoperability of EHR systems leading to ease of shared information, efficiency and improved patient safety.