Today’s dental students will need to be prepared to treat the most rapidly growing demographic in the United States—older adults. The population over the age of 65 is expanding significantly with 10,000 adults reaching this milestone each day. Despite older adults living longer, many have health issues, including on average two or more chronic health conditions.

While the number of older adults in the U.S. is increasing, the number of health professionals who specialize in their care is decreasing. Oral health providers who care for older adults must not only be open to coordinating with the patient, the patient’s family, caregivers, and other professionals but must have specific training regarding their care. Additionally, inequalities in oral health and the complex relationship between oral health and general health, especially among those with multiple chronic conditions, requires a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and patient-centered approach.

Harvard School of Dental Medicine received grant funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) to address how predoctoral dental students are trained to work with aging patients. Dr. Christine Riedy, chair and associate professor of Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology, secured HRSA funding for the program “Predoctoral Oral Health Education and Training for an Aging America (POHETAA).”

The overall goal of the program is to transform the education and training of Harvard School of Dental Medicine’s (HSDM) predoctoral dental students by incorporating age-friendly, interprofessional, and social determinants of health principles into their curriculum to better prepare them to care for underserved and vulnerable older adults. It seeks to address the gap in geriatric oral health education by enhancing predoctoral dental didactic and emergent clinical experiences as well as creating a geriatric oral health track that will enable predoctoral dental students to build skills and competencies in several areas. Areas of focus include the “Four M’s Framework—what Matters most, Medication, Mentation, and Mobility; interprofessional education and collaborative practice (IPE/IPCP), including integration of oral health and primary care; cultural competence and health literacy; and the social determinants of health.

“With this program we hope to improve and expand dental students’ exposure to elder care issues they will face in their future clinical practice,” Riedy said. “They will gain an understanding of and skills in how to provide care to underserved and vulnerable older adults, and get exposure to interprofessional collaborative practice, teledentistry, and Age-Friendly Health Systems.”

Dental students who show a particular interest in treating older adults, will have the opportunity to pursue an innovative community-based geriatric oral health track that delivers active learning, didactic strategies, and best practices in older adult oral healthcare. The aim is to create a pathway for a diverse pool of predoctoral dental students into postdoctoral general dentistry and dental public health programs as well as geriatric fellowship programs to ensure a skilled workforce to meet Americans’ aging oral health needs.

"As a dentist who primarily cares for vulnerable older adults, I am often the last resort for many patients who are homebound, live in assisted care settings, or have complex medical and oral health needs that other dentists do not feel comfortable treating,” said Dr. Lisa Thompson, instructor in Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology and director of HSDM’s Advanced Graduated Education Program in Geriatric Dentistry. “Clinical exposure to older adult's complex medical and oral health needs is critical for students to care for the exponentially aging population as a future dentist. This grant will help bring attention to the oral health needs of older adults and help bolster our predoctoral geriatric curriculum and increase the clinical exposure needed to equip students to care for vulnerable older adults in the future."

Reference: https://hsdm.harvard.edu/news/treating-aging-population-new-funding-will-increase-training-geriatric-dentistry