The
International Dentistry Opportunities Initiative
was established in 1999 and provides an alternative mechanism
for faculty participation in scholarly activities
through intensive education/training of foreign dentists. The
approach utilizes traditional lectures, webcasts,
teledentistry and involves reciprocal visits and design/implementation
of continuing education, community programming, and
public health dentistry. To date, the program has
served
a group
of Albanian dentists in 1999, been instrumental in
a trip to Russian-Georgia in 2000, and is currently
working
with Cuba for future programming. The recent success
of the international dentistry efforts in Russian
Georgia have led to an opportunity to establish a continuous
presence in the region. A dental clinic and treatment
facility is being constructed and School of Dentistry faculty will
lead an organized effort to supervise ongoing rotations
from United States professionals and students in
order to work with local infrastructure to serve the needs
of the area. School of Dentistry will be the lead institution involved
in a consortium to providing primary care, prevention,
public health programming, and education. The site
will have internet capability to facilitate teledentistry
and transfer of all assessment, intervention, and
other types of data back to School of Dentistry for research and publication
purposes. School of Dentistry will recruit other dental schools
and private practitioners from around the country so that
there will be continuous United States presence and
participation at the Russian site. In the interim,
while a clinic is
being constructed, School of Dentistry will continue to visit the
region to participate in planning and creation of
infrastructure and programming.
