Do Good, Better: Making a Difference in Global Oral Health

ABSTRACT

Short-term mission trips have long served as a way for oral health professionals to “give back,” using their abilities to address the heavy global burden of oral disease, a burden that disproportionately affects populations in low- and middle-income countries. These international volunteer programs may bring needed care to the communities they serve but can create challenges in ethical engagement, sustainability, and effectiveness. Currently, momentum is shifting away from the “clinical care elsewhere” model, where community context, relationship building, monitoring, and sustainability can be lacking, and moving toward approaches that focus on community collaboration, leadership, education, and advocacy. This paper aims to help clinicians evaluate their current and future short-term volunteer work through a new paradigm.

KEYWORDS:

• Global oral health
• dentistry
• mission trips
• global health ethics
• volunteerism
• STEGH
• short-term experiences in global health
• capacity

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Donna Hackley

Donna Hackley, DMD, MA, MPH, is pediatric dentist and Assistant Professor in Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology and Global and Community Health at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. She holds a masters in Peace and Conflict Studies/Organizational Leadership Track and a masters in public health, UC Berkeley, Interdisciplinary/Global Health track. With more than 15 years of experience in private practice, Dr. Hackley’s global projects center on educating an interdisciplinary workforce, identifying the burden of oral disease, and strengthening health systems to improve health. As PI for the Human Resources for Health Rwanda project, she led the team that supported the development, launch, and accreditation of the first and only dental school in the country. She also served as Co-PI for the first National Oral Health Survey in Rwanda. Dr. Hackley serves as Department Head of Oral Health at the University of Global Health Equity, Rwanda, where she co-developed and directed of a novel clerkship on oral health for physicians. Dr. Hackley strives to promote contextually relevant, sustainable, and inclusive development and to leverage her practical experiences to inform operations and policy.

Christy Colburn

Christy Colburn, MA, is Associate Director of Development and Alumni Relations at the UCLA School of Dentistry. She is a veteran of academic public/global health programs with extensive experience in advising, student recruitment and engagement, and program management. Most recently, Christy worked for the Global Health Program at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine, where she focused on communications, global partnership management, and donor development. Prior to joining UCLA, Christy directed Harvard University’s Undergraduate Program in Global Health. In this role, she managed both an academic degree program and a summer experiential learning program for the Harvard Global Health Institute. Christy worked with faculty across the university to develop global health curricula and increase student and faculty engagement. In collaboration with the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (HSDM), she became lead author on the first module of a competency-based global health curriculum for dental students. Christy also worked on a mixed-methods maternal mortality research study at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, advised international students at MIT, and provided technical support for the World Health Organization in Geneva. Christy has spent time living abroad in Switzerland, Luxembourg, and the Czech Republic and volunteering in Haiti and Honduras.

Jean Creasey

Jean Creasey DDS, UCSF D 01’, is an Assistant Professor and serves as course director of the Ethics and Professionalism program at California Northstate University, College of Dental Medicine. She practiced as a community health dental hygienist for 10 years prior to earning her DDS degree and then practiced general dentistry in rural Northern California for 20 years. She regularly visits southwestern Uganda where she collaborates in teaching oral health assessments and prevention at the Uganda Nursing School Bwindi and Bwindi Community Hospital. She has also engaged in research on understanding the East African traditional medicine practice of removing unerupted canine tooth buds from infants known as infant oral mutilation (IOM). Additionally, she has worked in global outreach activities through the Global Dental Ambassador teaching program in Sicily and Morocco, the NYU School of Dentistry in Ecuador and Rotary International in Mexico. She lectures regularly to dental and dental hygiene students on the ethics of global health volunteering.