Innovative New Dental School to Open in Arizona Jack Dillenberg, DDS

The Arizona School of Health Sciences (ASHS) will open an innovative needs-based school of dentistry & oral health, in Mesa, Arizona, in the fall of 2003. The school will focus on meeting the needs of underserved communities for compassionate, culturally competent, technically-proficient, general dentists who take active community leadership roles. ASHS is a division of the Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine (KCOM). Based in Kirksville, Missouri, KCOM is the founding institution of the osteopathic profession. With 109 years of experience, KCOM is highly-respected and nationally recognized for training primary care physicians who practice in rural and under-served areas. The institution was ranked first in the nation by the American Medical Student Association in their Primary Care Scorecard, featured in the April issue of New Physician magazine, and in the top 20 of all osteopathic or allopathic medical schools by U.S. News and World Report in its America’s Best Graduate Schools edition, published in April 2001.

Arizona School of Health Sciences, established in Phoenix in 1995, is a needs-based school committed to quality graduate education of health care professionals in the fields of: audiology, medical informatics, occupational therapy, physical therapy, physician assistant studies, and sports health care. Embracing a philosophy of interdisciplinary cooperation and collaboration, the educational process at the Arizona School of Health Sciences focuses on a strong foundation of critical inquiry that may be applied to health care practice, research, education, and administration. In addition, ASHS’s Physician Assistant program was ranked 19th in the nation in the June 2001 U.S. News and World Report’s web based report on graduate health professions.

The national need for dentists is high and will remain so according to the American Dental Association. Roughly 6,000 U.S. dentists retire from active practice each year, while about 4,200 dentists graduate. The Federal Bureau of Primary Care indicates that as many as 25 million people need dental care requiring an additional 4,900 dentists. The Federal Indian Health Service also has a critical need for dentists, and notes this among its greatest health professions need with a 20 percent vacancy rate for dentists. Compounding the shortage of dentists treating American Indians is a rate of untreated dental disease among two to four-year- old American Indian children that is six times higher than that of white children. The Surgeon General’s Report states that among Navajo school children living in parts of the Navajo reservation in Arizona and New Mexico, 25 percent avoid laughing or smiling and 20 percent avoid meeting other people because of the way their teeth look.

Rapid population growth in Arizona and the Southwest has compounded both the need for dentists, and the oral health problems of many communities. Forty-three percent of Arizona’s children, ages six to eight, have untreated tooth decay, compared to a national average of 31 percent and the national Healthy People goal of 20 percent. The growing need for dental care is also evident in Arizona’s senior population. Forty-four percent of Arizona’s seniors have bleeding gums and/or calculus, while another 38 percent have more significant oral health problems. This population alone is expected to grow by 82 percent in Arizona over the next twenty years, which will accelerate the need for oral health care services.

The ASHS school of dentistry & oral health will draw on KCOM’s established excellence for identifying and training health care providers that make community commitments. The new school will be needs-based, competency driven, and service learning oriented. The School of Dentistry and Oral Health will capitalize on modularized dental education courses complemented with advanced educational technologies. This intensive and innovative integration of technology into the educational model is a strategy utilized in other ASHS programs, and will be a hallmark of the dental school. Educational delivery strategies will be built around proven learning theories, and facilitated with digital technologies.

Clinical courses will be mentored by on and off-campus community based dentists who are trained, calibrated and monitored by school-based faculty.

The ASHS sought a leader for the dental school that would keep the needs based mission in the forefront. The leader they identified was Dr. Jack Dillenberg, the inaugural Dean of the ASHS school of dentistry & oral health. Dr. Dillenberg has held high-level positions in public health in Arizona and, most recently, California, where he served as the Associate Director of Public Health Programs in the California State Health Department. In Arizona state govern-ment, he held a cabinet-level position as Director of the Arizona Department of Health Services. Dr. Dillenberg has also served as President of the Association of State & Territorial Health Officials, President of the American Association of Public Health Dentistry, and has been on the Harvard School of Dental Medicine’s faculty since 1978. “ I am coming back to Arizona to create a quality dental school,” says Dr. Dillenberg, “This is a chance to develop a new model of dental education, and to produce general dentists who focus on the needs of communities.” Dr. Dillenberg can be contacted at jdillenberg@ashs.edu.