Recently, former Surgeon General David Satcher spoke at a conference to address the nation’s oral health, sponsored by the Morehouse School of Medicine and the Sullivan Alliance. Dr. Satcher spoke one-on-one with Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, before opening conversation up with the crowd. During the conference, Dr. Satcher illuminated the nation’s shortage of dentists, stating that the shortage would only worsen with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in 2014, which will entitle five million additional children to dental care. Dr. Satcher proposes solutions to the issue:
- Create new dental providers
- Build a cadre of dental practitioners
- Expand the reach of the dental team with other healthcare professionals
- Launch workforce pilot programs to determine how to expand access to dental care
ADA President William Calnon, D.D.S., disagrees with some of Dr. Satcher’s proposals. “[The ADA] disagrees with Dr. Satcher’s proposed solution: allowing nondentists with as little as 18 months post-high school training to perform surgical procedures like extractions and pulpotomies (drilling through the hard tooth surface and removing soft tissue). … The country will never drill, fill and extract its way to victory over untreated dental disease. A public health system based primarily on surgical intervention in disease that could have easily been prevented is ill conceived and doomed to fail.”
Despite Dr. Satcher proposing solutions that Dr. Calnon disagrees with, they both agree on one thing: the best way to squall the issue is through oral health education and disease prevention.
“We’ve got to make sure that people have the opportunity to be physically active, to consume healthy diets, [and] to make wise decisions [about their health].” –Dr. Satcher
Read the press release from the Morehouse School of Medicine
Read the full transcript
Watch Dr. Satcher speak
