Community Outreach / Service Learning

Being engaged in the surrounding community and striving to make it a better place is a key piece of Penn’s mission and educational goals. Through the School’s varied outreach and service-learning programs, Penn Dental Medicine students provide much-needed oral health services to the community, while broadening their understanding of public health issues. These academically based service-learning programs provide students and faculty with the framework to complete community-based activities as an essential, required component of academic course work. In total, students log approximately 16,000 service hours each year in both required and elective community experiences and the honors program.

This integral part of the curriculum takes students outside of the School’s clinics and campus to connect with diverse segments of the public and come to understand the impact of social, cultural, and economic forces on oral health care. The service learning programs are also an innovative and sustainable model for increasing access to care within the community and provides dental students and faculty with multiple opportunities to work with community partners in existing service programs where oral health education and services can be readily implemented. The required nature of students’ activities ensures that all students receive a consistent level of mentored community activities, and provides a consistent presence in oral health programs organized with agency partners in the community.

A Curriculum Requirement: Each student is required to complete four academically based service learning courses (one at each year of dental school). They include the following:

Required Service-Learning Courses

Community Service Programs & Partners

Penn Dental Medicine’s academically based service learning program is based on a high level of collaboration between the University and community partners in West and Southwest Philadelphia. Penn Dental Medicine students and faculty provide health promotion and dental screening programs with four community programs, and provide clinical dental care and oral health promotion in five community care dental sites.

Health Promotion Programs

Community Dental Care Programs

Serving patients in the communities where they live, work and go to school is an increasingly significant part of the mission of Penn Dental Medicine. Through its Division of Community Oral Health, led by Dr. Joan Gluch, Penn Dental Medicine increases access to care and high quality dental care services to our neighbors in Philadelphia through three community care programs in Philadelphia: Mercy LIFE, PennSmiles at Schools/Community Health Centers, and Puentes de Salud.

These efforts have the crucial benefit of providing Penn Dental Medicine students with invaluable opportunities to expand their knowledge and skills in community based dental care. Students learn about their role in society in improving health at the population level, as well as gain insight to their patients’ lived experiences while providing much needed dental care. Many prospective students choose Penn Dental Medicine because of our robust offering of experiential community-based courses, and especially the strength of our community-based clinical activities at Penn Dental Medicine community sites that emphasize cultural competence, health literacy, health promotion, ethics, behavior management and practice management.

Dr. Leonard Jensen serves as Penn’s Primary Care Leader/Dental Director to lead faculty and staff working at the community care dental sites. Dental students provide care one day per week for a calendar year beginning in January of the third year continuing through to December of the fourth year.

Community Care Programs

Community Health Honors Degree Program

Students also have the opportunity in their second, third, and fourth years to apply to the honors degree program in Community Health. The honors program allows talented and motivated students to go beyond the basic requirements to receive an intensive experience in developing and implementing community health programs from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Students enrolled in the Community Health honors degree program provide at least 120 hours in coordinating and staffing these interdisciplinary clinics, and second- and third-year students provide specialized oral health educational programs, complete oral health examinations, and discuss dentist referrals to both the Penn Dental Medicine clinics as well as neighborhood dental centers.