Mission Centric | A message from the Dean
Happy New Year to everyone, and welcome to 2025!
As we launch into this new year, it is a great time to reflect on our mission: advancing health through scientific discovery, innovative education and the highest-quality care for all communities. Advancing health requires a holistic approach - one that extends beyond clinical care to encompass all factors that influence well-being. Clinicians sometimes use the term “health care” to articulate goals. However, health care refers to the systems or treatments that are utilized or performed to help improve the health of people and populations. Improving health obligates us to consider all aspects of our patients’ life, including but not limited to: their behaviors, other disease processes and any unmet social needs. This mission calls for us to collaborate with our colleagues in pharmacy, nursing, medicine, social work, speech language pathology, occupational therapy and any other discipline that leads to improvement.
As a school we have many examples of collaboration across the tripartite mission. Our research and our Oral Biology PhD program have always worked with colleagues in other schools and disciplines. Educationally, our curriculum includes faculty lectures and presentations from non-school faculty. Our faculty provide educational content for other schools and programs. Clinically, our learners participate in hospital rounds, emergency department calls, clearances of solid organ transplant patients, the Phillips Neighborhood clinic and we have had non-dental providers participate in the care of patients in Moos Tower. I am proud of all the ways that our school leans into our mission to advance through many types and forms of collaboration.
As we begin 2025, I encourage us to all be intentional in seeking new opportunities for external collaborations, whether with community partners, healthcare organizations or colleagues across the health sciences. Fulfilling our mission requires us to build and strengthen strategic partnerships, and I have no doubt that our collective efforts will drive continued success. I am proud of all we have achieved and look forward to what lies ahead in 2025 and beyond.