Association seeks more dentist-physician collaboration

ADA President Mark J. Feldman in a letter to the American Medical Association called for more collaboration between dentists and physicians “to improve the oral health of the most vulnerable Americans.”

The AMA published Dr. Feldman’s response (“There can be even more collaboration between dentists and physicians”) to an AMNews article, “Tooth or consequences”.

“Your article states that the problem with access to dental care by so many patients is due ‘in part because there are so many more physicians than dentists,'” the American Dental Association president said. “The problem isn’t how many dentists there are. It’s where they are, and whether the funding and infrastructure are in place to get patients into a dental office.”

The AMNews article “recognizes that the traditional divide between dentistry and medicine is shrinking,” Dr. Feldman wrote. “Eight years after the U.S. Surgeon General’s report on oral health, we seem at last to be making headway. But there remains great room for growth in the collaboration among dentists, physicians and others to improve the oral health of the most vulnerable Americans, particularly the elderly and the poor.”

The collaborative effort includes physician and dentist advocates for community water fluoridation and against the use of tobacco products, professional volunteers, government and “work force innovations such as the American Dental Association’s Community Dental Health Coordinator model, which extends dentistry’s reach into such chronically underserved communities as inner cities, remote rural areas and tribal lands,” said the ADA letter. “We’ve made some substantial progress, but still only increments when weighed against the great need.

“Working with Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) the ADA initiated the pending Deamonte’s Law mentioned in your article,” Dr. Feldman wrote. “So far, Congress has not enacted this legislation. We will bring every available resource to bear on encouraging it to do so.”

The legislation is named for Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old Maryland boy who died from a brain infection related to untreated dental disease.