Dentsply Sirona Hosts Special Care Dentistry Event

Dentsply Sirona is hosting an upcoming digital event focused on providing better care to patients with special needs and disabilities.

Dentsply Sirona is hosting the digital event Special Care Dentistry: Reducing Inequalities – Bridging the Gap on Nov 15, 2022, 2:00 – 4:00 pm CET.

The educational event will be streamed live from Dentsply Sirona’s site in Bensheim and highlights the importance of special care dentistry, which is often overlooked within dental practices and in university training, according to Dentsply Sirona.

Global dental professionals from four different backgrounds – practice, education, public health, and advocacy – will outline current challenges, present the latest advancements, and provide solutions to service this population.

The event will underscore the importance of providing better service to special needs individuals. According to the World Health Organization, around 15% of the world’s population is living with a disability – just over 1 billion people.

The session will feature the following leading experts in the field:

Mark Wolff, PhD, Morton Amsterdam dean of the University of Pennsylvania Dental School
Darryl Barrett, LLM, technical lead for disability at the World Health Organization
Dr Alison Dougall, immediate past president of the International Association for Disability and Oral Health and professor of special care dentistry at Trinity College Dublin
Jacobo Limeres Posse, DDS, PhD, professor at Santiago de Compostela University and former president of the Spanish Society of Special Care Dentistry
Mélanie Gréaux, MSc, consultant for the Disability Programme of the WHO Sensory, Disability and Rehabilitation Unit

With backgrounds spanning practice, education, public health, and advocacy, the panel will provide a well-rounded view of how to deliver reliably good care for people with disabilities and what special care dentistry education should look like at universities.

They will consider how recent advances can reduce oral health inequalities for people living with disabilities and provide new insights into best-practice care for this population. Attendees will also have the chance to ask questions on the topic.

“Persons with disabilities have the right to smile, eat, enjoy, speak, and function without pain and their families have the right to be supported in having practitioners that understand and care for them,” said Wolff. “We have the capability to change the quality of life for so many people and I think stepping up to do it is just part of who we are as a profession.”