Key Points
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Opens a debate on the role of dentistry in our society.
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Describes a socially engaged dentist.
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Leads to actions in terms of clinical practice and dental education.
Abstract
If dental professionals want to improve the oral health of their patients, they need to address what makes them sick: the social determinants of health. In this article, we propose a model of 'social dentistry' that shows how dentists could tackle these fundamental causes of oral disease. Socially engaged dentists conduct actions at three levels. At the individual level, they provide patient-centred care and, when necessary, liaise with local resources to better address what makes their patients sick. At the community level, they adapt their practice to the needs of the most vulnerable groups and advocate for healthier local policies. At the societal level, they are engaged in upstream actions addressing the social determinants of health.
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Acknowledgements
We found motivation and inspiration in the speakers of the 2016 Social Medicine Conference, especially Dr Joia Mukherjee, from Partners in Health. Let us also mention the inspirational work of Drs Paul Farmer, Arno Kumagai, and Rishi Manchanda, in the USA, and of Drs Sandy Buchman, Robert Woollard, Ryan Meili, Ritika Goel, and Bonnie H. Kirsh in Canada. These people, as several others not mentioned here, nourished our enthusiasm to develop our model of social dentistry and write our vignettes. We would like to thank our colleagues at McGill University for their support, Drs Martine Lévesque and Ninoska Enriquez, and the members of the McGill Group on Transformational Learning in Higher Education, Drs Richard Hovey, Charo Rodriguez, and Steven Jordan.
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Bedos, C., Apelian, N. & Vergnes, JN. Social dentistry: an old heritage for a new professional approach. Br Dent J 225, 357–362 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2018.648
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.bdj.2018.648
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