Happy New Year and welcome to Volume 12 of BDJ Team and to our new Editor-in-Chief, Avijit Banerjee. Avi began working with the BDJ Portfolio team in this new capacity in December and joined us all at Stephen Hancocks' farewell party at the British Dental Association. You can find out more about Avi in our news section this month - if I summarised his CV here I would run out of space!

A new year often inspires spring cleans, resolutions, detoxes and pledges for better health. If you are a dental professional experiencing aches and pains as a result of your daily duties, do read the ‘Top tips for preventing musculoskeletal disorders and optimising posture for dental professionals' in this issue. According to the article, dental professionals are one of the highest risk groups for developing musculoskeletal disorders so looking after your health is vital to ensure a lengthy, successful career.

We have a number of in-depth, original articles to kick off the year: first-time BDJ Team writer Stacie de Klerk, a dental therapist from Essex, shares her opinion on how dental care professionals could maximise access to NHS dentistry.

Authors from Peninsula Dental School - which in 2007 was the first new UK dental school to open in the UK in over 40 years - reflect on ten years of integrating teaching of undergraduate dental students and undergraduate dental therapy and hygiene students. This article includes many interesting case studies of dental therapy and hygiene graduates from the past decade, some of whom are familiar faces, having written for or been interviewed for BDJ Team themselves.

Dr Rob Emanuel and Agi Tarnowski suggest a method of risk/susceptibility assessment to aid clinical decision-making for complex older adults presenting for treatment. Regular contributor Rebecca Silver looks at hierarchy in dentistry from a dental nurse perspective; and orthodontic therapist Chrystal Sharp returns with top tips to improve aligner tracking, and an interview all about AI and remote orthodontic monitoring.

There is so much packed into this issue of BDJ Team and I hope this continues as the year goes on. But we can't do it without new contributors, interviewees, ideas and reader panellists. Please contact me if you would like to be involved!

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Kate Quinlan

Editor

k.quinlan@nature.com