Dr. Eleanor Fleming is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Public Health. She earned her dental degree from Meharry Medical College, completed her dental public health residency at Boston University, and earned her PhD from Vanderbilt University. She completed additional post-graduate training as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer where she investigated disease outbreaks and conducted studies to promote health equity.

Over the course of her career, she has developed subject matter expertise on infectious and chronic disease epidemiology, and previously served as the dental epidemiologist overseeing the Oral Health Component of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. She has been the principal investigator on several studies and has informed public health surveillance at state, national, and international levels. Dr. Fleming is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of the American Dental Association and Public Health Reports. She also co-edited a special issue of the Journal of Public Health Dentistry on anti-racism in dental public health.

Dr. Fleming has held leadership positions in the American Association of Public Health Dentistry and the American Public Health Association (currently, Chair-Elect of the Oral Health Section), was actively involved in the National Dental Association serving on its Coronavirus Task Force, and is a member of the Hispanic Dental Association and the Society of American Indian Dentists. Dr. Fleming’s leadership has been recognized with awards from the American Dental Association, the National Dental Association, and the U.S. Public Health Service. In addition to her administrative and faculty appointments at the University of Maryland School of Dentistry, she holds an adjunct Clinical Associate Professor appointment in the Department of Health Policy and Health Services Research at the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine at Boston University where she supports the training of dental public health residents.

Briona Phillips is a Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) scholar and PhD candidate at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). She holds dual degrees in Public Health (MPH) and Social Work (MSW) both earned from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). She completed her undergraduate degree in Global Studies from Loyola University Maryland. Briona is a native of Baltimore, Maryland with a wealth of experience in human service delivery both locally and globally. Specifically, Briona Phillips MPH, MSW., research focuses on oral health wellness and barriers to oral health care utilization among Black Americans residing in urban cites across the United States. Briona’s research centers on discrimination, intersectional identities and its influence on Black American patients’ engagement and adherence to dental treatment. Briona seeks to bridge the gap between social determinants of oral health, and structural determinants of health inequities through targeted cross-disciplinary approaches across professions and interventions at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels. Briona is a member of several professional organizations to include Tri-Iota, Phi Alpha Theta, Oral Health Progress and Equity Network (OPEN) and American Public Health Association (APHA). It is the goal of Briona’s research to collectively work together to advance the state of oral health wellness in promoting positive oral health behaviors to support life-long habits and wellness.

To support clinicians and members of the oral health team in advancing health equity and promoting population-level health, this course is designed to explore how bias influences health outcomes with specific focus on vulnerable and historically excluded populations. This course will immerse oral health professionals in an educational journey that goes beyond numbers and epidemiological data to introspection and reflection of personal biases and exploration of differences among the professional’s race, ethnicity, and cultural norms to those of patients serviced. At the end of the course, participants will be able to lead, contribute and participate in organizational practices and changes across the culture of dentistry in supporting population-level oral health outcomes and promoting oral health equity. Moreover, participants will leave the course with resources to support inclusion in their clinical practice. 

Participants will have the opportunity to discuss implicit bias, the effects of structural and systemic racism and strategies to address using effective communication techniques presented in modules within the curriculum.

This course is approved by the Maryland State Board of Dental Examiners.  

During this lecture, participants will:

• Define implicit bias; distinguishing between implicit and explicit bias
• Increase self-awareness of implicit bias and its effects
• Discuss the implications of implicit bias and its impact to the clinical and learning environment
• Provide strategies to mitigate the impact of implicit bias for vulnerable/ historically excluded populations
• Explore the historical context of structural, systemic racism and bias
• Increase awareness of oral health care disparities due to racial and ethnic differences to better support, promote and understand health equity measures
• Discussion of current research on implicit bias in the access to and delivery of health care services.

Upon completion of the online course, participants are required to pass an online post-course assessment with a minimum grade of 75%.

Once the online course has been accessed, no refunds will be provided.

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