The NAME Project: A Narrative Dentistry and Medical Education Project

种族和少数民族的口腔保健结果在人口之间存在明显的差异

Oral healthcare outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities present a stark divide between populations who are able to access regular dental care, and communities struggling to receive basic and sometimes life saving treatment. The public health challe1ru&Macism will be explored within the context of dental care. The Narratives and Medical Education ( • ) project is focused on understanding and responding to racism in dental care by generating an innovative, replicable community-engagement model that disrupts ineffective traditional systems of care and seeks to understand the experiences of marginalized communities. Asset and socio-ecological models will be utilized to conduct needs assessments among communities with underserved racial and ethnic minority prospective patients. The disruptor to traditional locations of care that takes place in dental offices, clinics and hospitals is public libraries. These community spaces located across the United States are one of the few remaining places that provide free and accessible entry for all individuals. We aim to demonstrate the effectiveness of utilizing public libraries as alternative, neutral, and safe spaces for underserved racial and ethnic minority prospective patients to: 1) acquire new information about existing local dental care services and to learn how to navigate and gain access to these services; and 2) to engage with trainee practitioners - predoctoral dental students and dental hygiene students; and 3) to share their stories with journalism and pre-dentistry/health students. Health fairs hosted at public libraries will provide an opportunity for service learning and community engagement for trainee dental and dental hygiene students. The experience of dental and dental hygiene students in working with diverse communities will be captured through focus groups. Post community engagement activities, the process of reflective practice will be introduced in narrative dentistry workshops with predoctoral dental students and dental hygiene students, leading to the creation of narrative dentistry modules that could be incorporated into dental health care training curriculum.