Recorded presentation

Neal A. Demby, DMD, MPH and Susan L. Dietrich, DMD. Department of Dental Medicine, Lutheran Medical Center, 150 55th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11220, 718-630-7177, sdfl@att.net

Recruitment and retention of oral health providers to underserved areas remains a chronic and critical problem in assuring access to dental services. Safety net providers such as Community Health Centers (CHC), while being under continual budgetary pressures are faced with having to devise strategies to accommodate these dental workforce issues. Lutheran Medical Center (LMC), a 500 plus bed ambulatory hospital located in southwest Brooklyn NY, is home to one of the largest CHCs in the nation and sponsors three CDA accredited dental residency training programs. The two largest and most innovative of these are postdoctoral general dentistry residency (PDGD) training programs referred to as General Practice Residency (GPR) and Advanced Education in General Dentistry (AEGD). For almost three decades, LMC has forged partnerships with CHCs throughout the country as a strategy to increase access to care by placement of full-time residents in extramural practice settings. This is consistent with the mission of LMC in its role of an institution without walls as a means of increasing access and assuring equity in oral health care for community residents. The study examines longitudinally a cohort of all graduates of LMC's GPR/AEGD programs to evaluate the current practice patterns of PDGD residents who train in CHCs and underserved areas. Data suggest that residents who train in underserved areas lead to a commitment to caring for and integrating underserved populations within their practice patterns. The use of the LMC service/learning approach is a persuasive strategy to manage mounting recruitment and retention problems within CHCs.

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