My first AAMD Conference: A Rewarding Experience
by Joseph R. Greenberg DMD, FCPP
Dear Helen,
I just had to write to tell you personally how much I enjoyed your AADMD Meeting in Denver this year—my first. This meeting also represented the culmination of an extraordinary year of working with the Alliance for Oral Health Across Borders, now an affiliate of yours. My role with the AOHAB grew from casual awareness to regular sessions of remote mentoring with a group of international dentists and dental students called the SLGOH—that’s the Student Leadership in Global Oral Health. These young men and women from all over the World, recruited through the hard work and insightful leadership of Dr. Deborah Weisfuse, brought their own knowledge and experience in community oral health to our table each month. They seemed like little sponges soaking up whatever information and advice we mentors could give them, and always with the utmost respect and gratitude. They were all working towards birthing an oral health/overall health project in their own localities and producing a display poster to represent this effort.
The chosen faculty of the AOHAB/SLGOH project (proudly listed on the website) delivered monthly lecture/seminar programming relevant to community and global oral health which we all attended together via Zoom. I was delighted to present on “Delivering Effective Presentations”—a topic I had never spoken on previously. I must say it was very rewarding for me to research and prepare this program and, happily, it was very well received by the Student Leaders and other AOHAB faculty.
I have spent over 50 years practicing and teaching Advanced Adult Esthetic Restorative Dentistry and Periodontics. I attained the rank of Adjunct/Clinical Professor for my teaching in courses and departments related to my specialties at both Penn Dental and Kornberg/Temple Dental Schools in Philadelphia. Along the way I founded an incredible non-profit named Kids Smiles and helped start a successful entity called the National Children’s Oral Health Foundation. My recent retirement from clinical practice has given me the opening for a deeper involvement in a public health endeavor like AOHAB. I’m very fortunate to be continuing this participation with a brand new group of SLGOH residents now.
During my 50+ years in Dentistry, I was often asked to contribute to and/or participate in community oral health projects outside the USA, often in third-world countries. My work with Kids Smiles taught me that one could find extreme poverty conditions right here in the USA, as in parts of North Philadelphia. A third-world country right here at home. So it seemed more prudent for me to devote whatever time, energy and money I could to domestic projects in oral health.
It was an article by Habib Benzian and his team (JADA July 2022) that opened my eyes to the importance of Global Oral Health. They wrote “by connecting global and local issues within dentistry, oral healthcare within the U.S. and other countries can be better understood. Global policies and debates, like environmental concerns and antimicrobial resistance, affect local care delivery. In connecting global and local issues, new perspectives may emerge to address local challenges.”
This reminded me of my favorite quote from Albert Einstein: “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’. A part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of humanity.”
Thank you, Helen, for inspiring this extraordinary and diverse group of caring health professionals dedicated to the oral health and overall health of those in great need.
Sincerely yours,
Joseph R. Greenberg DMD, FCPP