Dental and Oral Health Care and the Importance of Representation

This FRAME Film highlights the importance of representation in Dental and Oral Health Care.

This series is created with the support of the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation.

This FRAME film series on representation aims to increase awareness within the medical community of the inequities and existing cultural biases and the impact of disability at the intersections of race and ethnicity on quality of life and health outcomes. There is an urgent need for future interdisciplinary healthcare teams to have a more robust and interpersonal understanding of diversity across the social determinants of health.

The statistics to support this film series is staggering. According to the CDC, 61 million adults in the United States live with a disability. 26 percent (one in 4) of adults in the United States have some type of disability. Disabilities occur among all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups. Recent estimates in the United States show that about one in six, or about 17%, of children aged 3 through 17 years have one or more developmental disabilities. Through vigorous cross-sector partnerships with health advocacy organizations and educational institutions, our programs support and promote the humanity and dignity of individuals living with genetic, physical, intellectual and behavioral differences in medical training and in the broader public arena

A recurring theme voiced by many of our families and organizations is the need to help physicians, medical students and other health care trainees learn how to best meet the concerns of individuals and families impacted by disability. For this reason, it is imperative that humanity is integral in medical education. It is crucial to train future generations of healthcare professionals to see individuals living with disabilities first and foremost as a human being with his/her own challenges rather than as a specific diagnosis/disease entity.

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