Dental education and public policy: a research agenda.

The Work Group on the Education of the Health Professions and the Nation's Health offers the theme of discontinuity to describe why so little useful knowledge has been derived from research in this area and to suggest a more productive approach for future studies. Discontinuities are evident among the needs of patients and populations and how dentists practice and in what dentists do in practice versus the content of dental education. The Work Group recommends six areas directly applicable to dentistry in which research might alleviate these discontinuities.