‘Pathways for youth to become oral health professionals’
A version of this Q&A first appeared in the Dental Bite Newsletter. Sign up to here to receive the weekly newsletter.
By Carrie Pallardy | for Dental Bite
The shortage of oral health workers is an ongoing challenge in dentistry. And Planet Smilez is invested in finding a solution. The nonprofit engages with children to educate them about possible dental careers. Last year, Delta Dental awarded Planet Smilez funding through its Oral Health Diversity Fund.
Kathryn Pawlak, DDS, Planet Smilez executive director and founder, sat down with Dental Bite to talk about the nonprofit’s work and ongoing plans to create more pathways to oral health careers. - Carrie Pallardy
How do you see the growing shortage of oral health professionals impacting the industry and patient care today?
So, I'm a pediatric dentist by day, and there is a huge workforce shortage. I graduated dental school and went to residency. I was in the class of COVID. My residency program was in a private practice, community-based care setting. I saw that many hygienists didn't come back to work after COVID happened.
You can see how there's been a strong impact on how it affects patient care. Sometimes patients are having dental emergencies and because they can't access a dental provider and what they say quickly, patients are going to the emergency room for care. So, it's overloading the emergency department.
I used to take calls at a children's hospital when I was a resident, and many times patients couldn't get in to see their dentist for whatever reason. Or they had a dental trauma or they have a dental abscess. Dental abscesses can be managed by dentists. But sometimes patients don't want to wait to get in or they can't get in right away just because there are not enough providers available. And then the overload is falling on the hospital system, which then comes at a really large cost to the insurance companies.
How is Planet Smilez working to address those workforce gaps?
Planet Smilez is a nonprofit based on oral health education, and our goal is to create pathways for youth to become oral health professionals from pursuing careers as dental assistants to dental hygienists to dentists. And then, we go into different dental specialties.
This all started when I was in college. I was a pre-dental student, and I started by doing an education mission trip to the Dominican Republic. I came back and felt really empowered to continue providing education.
I got to the University of Maryland Dental School, and Planet Smilez was an established nonprofit. But I realized that there was a gap in providing pathways programs for kids.
I always knew I wanted to be a dentist myself, but I realized that many kids from health professional shortage areas (HPSAs) or from economically and educationally underserved backgrounds might not have had access to learning about careers as oral health professionals.
So I started a summer camp at the University of Maryland called the Discovering Dentistry Camp. We brought in kids from a local STEM program and talked about careers as oral health professionals. That is something I started in 2015 and is still going to date.
I realized that the camp wasn't portable. Last summer, I took the high-yield components of the summer camp and created a mobile program called the Discovering Dentistry Symposium. And so that's our one-day immersive program that we launched with the Maryland Department of Health’s Office of Oral Health, targeting three dental HPSA regions across the state.
We applied for funding through the Delta Dental Institute, and we have been a recipient of the Oral Health Diversity Fund. We're very grateful for the opportunity to do 10 of our immersive programs. We're currently providing programming this year in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Maryland. We are looking to expand to other cities and states.
How are you planning to expand Planet Smilez and its initiatives?
We are looking for a national expansion, and we are looking for funding opportunities to make that possible. We look for HPSAs surrounding different oral health professional programs. Many times we partner with different dental schools and professional programs.
For instance, this year we're partnering with the University of Maryland School of Dentistry and Oklahoma Dental School. We worked with Rutgers School of Dental Medicine. In the past, we have worked with dental hygiene programs as well.
We identify either a STEM program with youth middle schoolers and high schoolers. We work with various science chairs at local high schools to help us identify that.
In Maryland, we're working with the Office of Oral Health, which has oral health community advisors that are hygienists in the community, that helps spread the word and really recruit the students who have interest.
We do our programs to meet the students where they're at. It decreases the burden of transportation for the students. So, when we were in New Jersey this year, we did it at two local high schools. One was a magnet high school. The students really had a strong interest in STEM.
And then we had the Rutgers dental students who were calibrated by us to come participate as mentors for the program. Having dental students there really creates this exciting opportunity for the youth participants because they can really feel what life is like as an oral health professional. They're really being mentored not only by professionals like myself and my team, which is comprised of dental public health specialists, periodontists, two other pediatric dentists and specialists, but then they also have the dental students there to really answer all of their real-life questions and learn about their pathways to dentistry.
What happens during the Discovering Dentistry Symposium?
The program starts off with the white coat ceremony, welcoming the youth into the oral health profession. And it goes into a career development talk, learning about different oral health professional careers: dental assistants, dental hygienists and dentists. Many times we pull in team members from the community that fill those roles. The students then have a community space that they can go to right for any related questions.
We start off the morning before that career talk with a pre-knowledge assessment. At the end of the day we assess the knowledge that's attained. And then there's the satisfaction survey at the end to see what they gained.
The meat of the day really comes in when it breaks up into six different stations to treat patients. There are patient cases that they solve. And with every case there is a hands-on demonstration. It's all built on immersive simulation. So they're treating their patients with traumatic dental injuries, medical emergencies, orthodontic cases, learning how to do a filling. The dental students, as I mentioned before, are calibrated ahead of time by our staff.
The day concludes with a certificate of completion. They get embroidered scrub tops and oral hygiene supplies. Then, they have the chance to mingle with the local community partners that maybe they want to shadow.
That was one of the requests after our last program in New Jersey. They wanted to know where they could actually shadow a dentist and get involved.
You are a big believer in mentorship. Can you share a specific example of how Planet Smilez has provided that?
I got an email from a parent not too long ago about a program that happened last June, and she reached out just to speak her thanks.
“I wanted to take a moment to express my sincere gratitude for all of the support and guidance you've provided my daughter as she navigates her journey towards becoming a dental hygienist. Your encouragement and insight has made such a positive impact. And I know it wouldn't have been easy for her without your help. You’ve not only been an educator, but also a mentor. I deeply appreciate the time and care you've given her. The training was amazing. Thank you for helping her take the first steps in this exciting career path.”
So, hearing from this parent six months later was really, really exciting.
Do you have any advice for practicing dentists who want to engage more in education and mentorship with the next generation?
We're always looking for new mentors and educators for our program. If people have interest, they can definitely reach out to us.
Maybe go to your local dental school or local dental society to see what opportunities might be there. Talk to a high school class about why a career as a dentist is a good opportunity.
Responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.
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