Grant to help ADEA increase dental faculty diversity

The American Dental Education Association Minority Dental Faculty Development (ADEA MDFD) program has received a $200,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to expand the program's existing critical efforts to improve diversity among populations of dental students and faculty.

The new grant follows a $2.4 million grant to initially fund the program from 2004 to 2010. During the initial program phase, the grant embraced the Grow Our Own concept, creating a partnership network of 11 universities and organizations with the goal of increasing diversity in all student and faculty populations, as well as developing leadership in new dental faculty.

Supporting the second phase of the ADEA initiative, this new funding will extend additional support to two dental hygiene programs, one at the University of Detroit Mercy and the other at Howard University. In addition to the scope of the initial grant, ADEA will now support recruitment and leadership training programs within dental hygiene at these two schools, with the hope of sharing best practices, within the context of team-based care, in partnering communities following the term of the grant.

The ADEA MDFD program's mission grows from surrounding research showing that minority patients are more likely to seek care from minority dentists, and, similarly, that practitioners from underserved areas often return to those areas to practice.