In fall 2015, all 149 first-year medical students at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) learned how to perform a basic oral health screening and apply fluoride varnish -- the first of many steps to better integrate dental with other healthcare professions at UCSF. Read Assistant Editor Theresa Pablos' article here.
Population-based early childhood caries (ECC) models are useful when trying to understand large-scale causes of caries; however, they are not as relevant when looking at individual cases. In a new, critical review, author Dr. Kimon Divaris evaluates where ECC models fall short and outlines how they can be improved. Read more here.
Dental spending remains sluggish five years after the economic recovery, according to a new report by the ADA's Health Policy Institute. The amount of empty chair time coupled with a wave of new dental graduates mean dentists' earnings will probably stay stagnant, the authors concluded. Read Features Editor Donna Domino's article here.
California received a D+ grade for not providing enough oral health services for the state's children, according to the new "2016 California Children's Report Card" by the advocacy group Children Now. Read more here.
What are you looking forward to this year? What would you like to see happen in clinical developments and the legislative arena? Will dentists' earnings recover? Will there be movement on addressing systemic issues that allow Medicaid fraud to occur? What new technologies and materials and treatments will emerge? Whatever the answers are to those questions, and others, we'll continue to focus on what matters to you in your practice.
