Press Release

Meharry School of Dentistry Awarded
$1.5 Million to Address Disparities in
Oral Health Care Delivery and Education

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – The School of Dentistry at Meharry Medical College is among just 10 dental schools in the nation awarded a $1.5 million grant that will increase access to oral health care among low-income and minority populations and improve recruitment efforts and provide scholarships to underrepresented minority dental students.

The grant is awarded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation of Princeton, N.J., as part of the foundation’s initiative, Pipeline Profession & Practice: Community-Based Dental Education. This program assists the selected institutions in addressing disparities in oral health care and education with five-year grants to link their schools to communities in need of dental care and to boost their underrepresented minority and low-income student enrollment.

“This funding will greatly enhance the Meharry traditions of providing oral health care to medically underserved areas and providing culturally competent education and training to deserving students who otherwise do not have access to dental school,” said Dr. William B. Butler, dean of the School of Dentistry at Meharry. “Both programs are essential to closing the dental disparity gap that exists, because in many cases, our students come from these underserved areas and then a majority of them tend to return to these areas after graduation in order to make their careers as practicing dentists.”

The dental disparity gap is described in the U.S. Surgeon General's “Report on the Oral Health of the Nation,” released two years ago, showing that while oral health in the U.S. has improved greatly over the last half-century, “there is a ‘silent epidemic’ of oral disease affecting poor children, the elderly and many members of racial and ethnic minorities.” At the same time, according to the American Dental Education Association, the numbers of underrepresented minority students enrolling in the nation's dental schools is far below their proportion in the U. S. population and has dropped significantly over the last decade.

Meharry’s location in North Nashville places the School of Dentistry in one of the hardest hit areas. A study by the Tennessee Human Services Department found that dental services were neither accessible nor affordable to North Nashville residents and designated it a Dental Health Professional Shortage Area.

Dental schools funded through the Pipeline program will work to counteract these trends. At Meharry, the focus will be on improving access to and quality of dental health care as well as recruitment of potential African-American, Hispanic and Native American students and professionals and low-income students from all racial and ethnic backgrounds.

The effort will encompass several stages:

• Maintaining Meharry’s existing partnerships with community-based clinics and increasing the numbers of community-based clinic partners
• Involving junior and senior dental students in the delivery of oral health care at these community-based clinics
• Revising the undergraduate dental curriculum to increase emphasis on ethnic diversity and community service, with the goal of creating an academic program that encompasses community-based education throughout the four-year dental program
• Increasing student recruitment efforts at historically black colleges and universities as well as schools with a preponderance of Hispanic and Native American students
• Providing additional financial aid so that more students can receive assistance

The Pipeline national program is based at Columbia University’s School of Dental and Oral Surgery under the direction of Dr. Allan Formicola at Columbia and Dr. Howard Bailitt of the University of Connecticut Health Center and Hartford Hospital. “This new RWJF initiative will help the dental schools in expanding their programs to help reach those populations who face obstacles to oral health care and to increase their enrollment of underrepresented minority students,” said Dr. Formicola. “Underrepresented racial and ethnic minority dental health professionals provide a large amount of the care to minority populations and it is, therefore, important to create a more diverse dental workforce than currently exists.”

Meharry Medical College is the nation’s largest private, independent historically black institution dedicated solely to educating health science professionals. Since its founding in 1876, it has been a leading producer of African-American physicians, dentists and biomedical scientists. The College is particularly well known for its emphasis on the special primary health care needs of minorities, the poor and the disadvantaged of America. Its graduates are respected nationwide for their commitment to underserved communities.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, based in Princeton, N.J., is the nation's largest philanthropy devoted exclusively to health and health care. It concentrates its grantmaking in four goal areas: to assure that all Americans have access to basic health care at reasonable cost; to improve care and support for people with chronic health conditions; to promote healthy communities and lifestyles; and to reduce the personal, social and economic harm caused by substance abuse – tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs.

-MMC-