Faculty Participate in NASEM Workshop on Advancing Oral Health Across the Lifespan

Philadelphia – Two Penn Dental Medicine faculty members –  Dr. Alonso Carrasco-Labra, Associate Professor within the Center for Integrative Global Oral Health (CIGOH), and Director of the Cochrane Oral Health Collaborating Center, and Dr. Flavia Teles, Associate Professor in the Department of Basic & Translational Sciences and core member of the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) – were among the panel of experts recently convened by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) for a public workshop exploring innovative practices and models for advancing oral health in the U.S. across the lifespan.

The NASEM defined the vision for Advancing Oral Health Across the Lifespan was to create a future where every American, regardless of background or circumstances, has equitable access to comprehensive oral healthcare across their lifetime—empowered by a deep understanding of oral health’s impact on overall well-being and supported by inclusive policies, a diverse and accessible workforce, integrated care models, affordable services, lifelong health education, and strong community advocacy. The program was designed to build on prior national initiatives, including the Surgeon General’s report on Oral Health, the National Institute of Health’s report on Advances and Challenges of Oral Health in America, along with NASEM efforts, with the goal of refining strategies and discussing potential milestones to achieve this vision.

Drs. Carrasco-Labra and Teles were part of the session titled Enhancing Oral Health Research and Innovation: A Window into the Future – one of the two-day workshop’s 11 sessions.

Dr. Teles represented the work of the CiPD, the cross-disciplinary initiative between Penn Dental Medicine and Penn Engineering. The CiPD is uniting dental medicine and engineering to support research, training, and entrepreneurship that spurs oral healthcare innovations and addresses unmet oral health needs.

“The CiPD is uniting collaborations throughout Penn to advance new discoveries and technologies to develop more effective yet affordable and accessible therapies and diagnostic approaches,” says Dr. Michel Koo, co-founder of the CiPD. “We were so pleased to have Dr. Teles representing the innovations underway at CiPD. She is building an exciting and highly feasible AI-based platform leveraging one-of-a-kind clinical and molecular data from patients with periodontitis that will have impact beyond oral health.”

Along with spotlighting the CiPD’s NIH/NIDCR-sponsored training program and the industry-sponsored fellowships at the Center, Teles also presented on one of her research projects, “Advancing Periodontal Care: Harnessing AI and Comprehensive Patient Data for the Prediction of Disease Progression,” exemplary of the work of CiPD. Teles was the inaugural recipient of this year’s Artificial Intelligence in Oral Health Innovation Award, a joint initiative between CiPD and the Institute of Biomedical Informatics, which will help advance this project with a collaborator from Penn Medicine.

“Our goal with this project is to construct a predictive model of periodontitis progression using AI by integrating molecular, clinical, and demographic data collected before and after disease progression and readily available,” explains Dr. Teles, who is among the more than 30 core members of CiPD, made up of faculty members from Penn Dental Medicine and Penn Engineering.

Dr. Carrasco-Labra spoke on the important role of evidence-informed clinical and public health guidelines in oral health.

“Guidelines allow efficient translation of research evidence into practice and should be conceived as implementation tools,” says Dr. Carrasco-Labra, who co-led the development of a new clinical practice guideline for managing acute dental pain in collaboration with the American Dental Association and the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine released early 2024. “Guidelines are the cornerstone of evidence-informed clinical and public health practice. Oral health practice guidelines conducted with rigorous methods and standards, as the ones used in the medical field, will facilitate the coordination and intersection of medical and oral health services.”

“CIGOH is committed to producing, synthesizing, and disseminating the best available “just-in-time” evidence to inform population and clinical decision-making. The emergence of “living” evidence synthesis and guidelines promises to enhance traditional guideline development,” says Dr. Michael Glick, Fields-Rayant Professor of Integrative Global Oral Health, and Executive Director of CIGOH. Typically, Dr. Glick explains, guidelines take years to be updated, leading to a gap between research findings and practical application. This lag, he notes, affects the quality of patient care and slows down the transfer of research findings into practice. Living guidelines, however, maintain currency through frequent updates informed by living systematic reviews, which continually monitor the availability of new research. “This process is particularly valuable in a rapidly changing health environment,” says Dr. Glick, “where integration of the most current evidence is critical.”

Proceedings from the full workshop will be prepared and released by NASEM at a future time.