Welcome to the Department of General Dental Sciences

Vision:

Following from the School’s vision to be the premier comprehensive academic oral health center, the Department’s vision is to comprise the general dental sciences component of this vision.

Mission:

Following from the School’s mission to continually improve the well-being and oral health of the people, the Department of General Dental Sciences seeks to improve the oral health of the population through its teaching, service, and research missions.  DMD graduates and residents come to understand that the most direct reason for the existence of the dental school is to improve the oral health of the population.  This means that the dental profession must take responsibility for the level of oral health of the population at large, as well as for individual dental patients who choose to and are able to enter the dental care system for prevention and treatment.  The means by which the dental school meets that end is by: (a) educating dental students, graduate students and residents, dentists, and other dental professionals; (b) providing direct clinical services; and (c) conducting oral health research and other scholarly activity.  Graduates remain cognizant that these three areas are means to an end, not ends in themselves.

With its teaching mission in the DMD curriculum, the department seeks to educate the next generation of dentists such that they are life-long learners who are prepared to deliver excellent general dentistry clinical care upon graduation and who are also prepared for the future of dental care delivery.  In addition to being competent in a broad range of clinical procedures, they must understand the community contexts in which they serve.  They also must be prepared to incorporate evidence-based and culturally-appropriate approaches into their daily clinical and community-oriented practices.  The future for which they must be prepared may entail increased integration with medicine and other non-dental components of the overall health delivery system, greater responsibility by the dentist for addressing medical implications of the patient’s oral health, and advanced technical aspects of dental care not delivered by mid-level oral health care providers.  The future may use the dental care system as a key entry point to the health care system at large, thereby providing an opportunity to identify systemic diseases at their most incipient stage via their relation to or access via the oral cavity.

Because the department comprises a single structure all focused on a common mission, it can effectively integrate these functions toward their common goals.  The Department integrates these diverse functions via a structure that comprises three divisions and several programs, described in alphabetical order below. 

The Division of Behavioral & Population Sciences emphasizes the aspects of the department’s activities that are focused at the community level and the profession’s role in taking responsibility for the population’s oral health, rather than only the oral health of individual patients who enter the dental care system for direct clinical treatment.  This role is communicated through both the Community Dentistry classes and community rotations to external clinical sites. Other external clinical locations are also made available to students to enhance this experience through the pediatric dentistry department and through the SEARCH program. These experiences are designed to enhance the students' understanding of the importance of incorporating culturally appropriate, evidence based approaches to their clinical and community practices. The Division Head is Conan Davis, DMD, MPH.  This division also houses the Biostatistics Unit, directed by Mark Litaker, PhD.  The Division and its faculty conduct research on a broad range of topics in oral health clinical research. 

The Division of Pre-doctoral General Dentistry emphasizes the department’s activities that are focused on ensuring that our DMD students graduate as competent providers of general dentistry clinical care.  The Division Head is Sonya Mitchell, DMD, MSHA.  The Division’s main clinical activity occurs in the Comprehensive Care Clinic on the second floor of the School of Dentistry building, directed by Raquel Mazer-Gurmendi, DMD, MPH.  Additional activity occurs in the Division’s Limited Care & Treatment Planning Clinic on the first floor.  The Director of the Limited Care & Treatment Planning Clinic is Maureen Pezzementi, DMD, MPH.  The Division also houses several major components of the DMD curriculum.  The Director of the Operative Dentistry curriculum for the department is Augusto Robles, DDS, MS.  Other area Directors are Fixed Prosthodontics (Toni Neumeier, DMD), Removable Prosthodontics (Yung-Tsung Hsu, DMD),  First-Year Preclinical Dentistry (Merrie Ramp, DMD, MS), and Second-Year Preclinical Dentistry (Lance Ramp, DMD, PhD).  The Division of Predoctoral General Dentistry also has a Dental Assisting Program.  The Director is Steven Filler, DDS, MS, MA.  The Dental Assisting Program has a one-year curriculum that typically graduates 20 students each year.  The Division also has a Maxillofacial Imaging Clinic of cone beam tomography for internal and privately referred patients. 

The Division of Post-doctoral General Dentistry & Oral Medicine focuses on ensuring competence in providing advanced comprehensive care to the dental patient who has complex medical diagnoses and/or special needs.  The Division Head is John Coke, DDS.  This division houses the General Practice Residency and the Advanced Education in General Dentistry Program.  Although each program has a separate accreditation by the American Dental Association, its six residents are functionally integrated into a single General Dental Residency.  The General Dental Residency also provides dental care for UAB Hospital inpatients and interacts with multiple hospital medical departments that are seeking dental consultation.  The Division’s main clinical activity occurs in the Hospital Dental Clinic in the UAB Hospital.  This division also takes responsibility for most of the oral medicine components of the DMD curriculum. 

The Department also has a Student Dental Health Program. The Director is Steven Filler, DDS, MS, MA.  This program is a closed-panel health maintenance program for students who are enrolled in the dental, medical, nursing, optometry or nurse anesthetist schools.  Patients are seen after-hours to accommodate the demanding schedules of these professional students.

The Department is the international administrative base for The Dental Practice-Based Research Network (DPBRN; www.DentalPBRN.org).  The Director (“Network Chair”) is Gregg Gilbert, DDS, MBA.  DPBRN is a consortium of participating practices and dental organizations committed to advancing knowledge of dental practice and ways to improve it.  Essentially, it is "practical science" done about, in, and for the benefit of "real world" daily clinical practice.  DPBRN's major source of funding is the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health.  DPBRN comprises practices from across the United States and three countries of Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway and Sweden).