Jonathan Dixon
United Kingdom
James Field
United Kingdom
Brett Duane
Ireland
The first Sustainability in Dentistry special interest group took place at ADEE's annual meeting in Berlin in 2019. The principal aim was to establish a needs assessment for the inclusion of sustainability in oral health professional education and to develop overarching principles to guide educators. The activity within the special interest group led to the publication of the first of three consensus reports (see outputs below).
During both the virtual ADEE conference in 2021 and the Palma meeting in 2022, the special interest group developed consensus-agreed learning outcomes and methods of teaching and assessment for sustainability in dentistry. The work was published in 2023 and has been used to inform curriculum development and regulatory frameworks worldwide.
The Sustainability in Dentistry special interest group meeting at ADEE annual conference in Liverpool in 2023 focused on the drivers and barriers to embedding sustainability within oral health professional education. A mixed-methods approach was employed to identify key institutional barriers to change, including the overloaded curriculum, a lack of faculty expertise and limited training opportunities. The groups proposed and described potential solutions to overcome these barriers, culminating in a list of guiding principles for future curriculum development. This work was published as the final consensus report from the group.
The special interest group concluded with practical examples of sustainability practices in dentistry. Published research outputs include evidence-based discipline-specific educational content for sustainability in dentistry, a longitudinal evaluation of sustainability in the curriculum and a published model of curriculum development. These resources can be found above.
