21^st Century Realities: The Urgency of Diversifying the Dental Professional Field

This article asserts that U.S. demographic shifts make it imperative that academic dental institutions and, in turn, the dental profession must diversify to best meet the needs of the nation's quickly changing population. In particular, it argues that the severe underrepresentation of African American and Hispanic students in dental schools is a detriment to those students who are being excluded from a field critical to the well-being of the population, their prospective peers who are thus not afforded the benefits of compositional diversity in the classroom, and the millions of Americans who live in areas with little to no access to culturally competent oral health care. With such complex challenges facing the profession, dental schools must evolve to prepare students of all races, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds to provide adequate oral health care to the country's changing population.