Recent Events and Happenings

For many years, the American Society for Dental Ethics has held a summer board meeting open to the entire membership. In 2024, for the first time in many years, we revived our summer continuing education offering with The Truth About Veracity. This year, we extend that conversation with a critical focus on justice and health equity in dental ethics. At this pivotal time, what does an ethically grounded commitment to justice offer the oral health professions? Our 2025 session initiates a year-long exploration of ethical transformation, with particular attention to access to care, elder and disability care, and the impact of ethical frameworks on policy and advocacy. This is the beginning of a necessary and interdisciplinary conversation. Our work continues to be guided by ASDE’s mission and three-fold purpose:

To uphold high standards of integrity and honor in the dental profession;
To encourage and assist dentists and dental professionals in improving their competence so that they can better serve their clients and the public;
To foster thoughtful discussion of, encourage and provide a forum for scholarly reflection on, and stimulate and assist educational programs in the professional and ethical issues that arise in or are related to dental practice, dental education, and dental research.

Summer 2025

Unpacking and Re-imagining Dental Ethics With Anti-Oppressive and Interdisciplinary Praxis

Eleanor Fleming, PhD, DDS, MPH, FICD 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.

This course invited participants to critically reflect on and reimagine dental ethics through the lens of anti-oppressive and interdisciplinary praxis. Drawing on two recent publications, the presentation explored how traditional ethical frameworks in dentistry may no longer meet the complex demands of the 21st century, and, in some cases, may contribute to rather than reduce existing health inequities. Conventional dental ethics, often grounded in a liberal social contract and shaped by assumptions centered on whiteness, risk reinforcing structural hierarchies and barriers to care. To build a more equitable and effective oral health system, a reexamination of these foundational ideas is both timely and necessary. This course proposed an alternative ethical vision: one that is anti-oppressive, person- and community-centered, and rooted in a conception of oral health as a human right beyond the limits of traditional liberal frameworks. The goal is both conceptual and practical, to support an examination within the discipline while making clear that the critique is directed at systemic structures, not individual ethicists or practitioners. Ultimately, this course offered an opportunity for scholarly and professional inquiry, encouraging participants to engage in meaningful reflection and dialogue as part of a collective effort to advance health justice in the oral health professions. Learning objectives included:

Think critically about how traditional dental ethics may be too narrow or outdated for today’s challenges.
Examine why older ideas about the social contract may not fully support ethical care in today’s diverse and complex oral health landscape.
Reflect on how white, Eurocentric ideas have shaped dental ethics, and consider what it means to move beyond them.
Explore how using anti-oppressive and interdisciplinary approaches can help reshape dental ethics to better support health equity and justice.

Fleming, E., Smith, C. S., & Quiñonez, C. R. (2023). Centering anti‐oppressive justice: Re‐envisioning dentistry's social contract. Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, 51(4), 609-614. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/cdoe.12854

Fleming, E., & Neville, P. (2025). Critical retelling of dental ethics told through ‘George Washington’s Complete Denture’. Medical Humanities. https://mh.bmj.com/content/early/2025/03/20/medhum-2024-013151.abstract

Spring 2025

Ethics and Dental Public Health with Dr. Scott Tomar

Dr. Scott Tomar is Professor and Associate Dean for Prevention and Public Sciences at the College of Dentistry. He has served as President of the American Board of Dental Public Health, the Oral Health Section of the American Public Health Association, the American Association of Public Health Dentistry, and the Behavioral, Epidemiologic and Health Services Research Group of the International Association for Dental Research. Dr. Tomar is a former editor of Journal of Public Health Dentistry and Journal of Evidence-Based Dental Practice. He served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Public Health.

Dr. Tomar offered attendees valuable insights into the intersection of ethics and community dental practice. The presentation described the specialty of Dental Public Health and introduced the Public Health Code of Ethics. It applied the Code to the public health program of community water fluoridation. Learning objectives included:

Describe the recognized speciality of Dental Public Health and compare and contrast to the clinical practice of dentistry.
Identify the core values of public health practice, as articulated in the APHA Public Health Code of Ethics.
Apply the Public Health Code of Ethics to the practice of community water fluoridation.

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