Dental public health: the past, present, and future. American Association of Public Health Dentistry. American Board of Dental Public Health.

The continued recognition process of dental public health as a specialty of dentistry served as an opportunity for the specialty to rediscover and reevaluate itself. What it found was a discipline that has evolved for 38 years to address the issues of a dynamic society. Dr. Abraham Kobren, ADA past-president has stated that public health dentistry stands as the dental conscience of the nation. The changes in dental public health mirror both changes in society and the technical changes occurring in dentistry. Identifying diseases in children is giving way to identifying diseases in adults. Prevention for adults is taking on as much importance as is prevention in children. Access to dental care for the poor and homeless is as much a problem as is access to care for people with infectious diseases. Infection control, technology transfer, national oral health objectives, and a myriad of new financing mechanisms are some areas of change. What has remained constant is the specialty's goal to improve the oral health of the public, and its commitment to work through "organized community efforts" to achieve this goal.