FUTURE OFDENTISTRYal health strategy must be predicated upon the
development and sustenance of partnerships,
defined as groups of allies sharing goals, efforts, and
consequences of their joint ventures. Partnerships
would form around global issues of diseases and dis-
orders, education, research, clinical practice, and
health promotion. These partnerships would be
leveraged by parallel, crosscutting trends in the
globalization of businesses, finances, politics, and
the movement of information and people. This
involvement requires an institutional commitment
to learning from the experiences of other countries,
and creates a mandate for leadership that is charac-
terized by sensitivity and respect for cultural diver-
sity. Examples of such partnerships may include:
educational exchange programs of personnel and
curricula; coordination of teledentistry and distance
learning; development of global data banks for
research and scientific resources and for education-
al and practice-related information.
A common thread for global partnerships must be
health promotion and disease prevention as strate-
gies are developed to deal with common risk factors
for oral diseases and other health problems that
have oral manifestations and affect the quality of
life. Centralized data banks and regional centers of
excellence, which develop information and facilitate
its dissemination, could ensure sustainability of
global efforts and initiatives.
As globalization evolves, issues such as the con-
vergence of professional curricula, common stan-
dards for assessment of clinical performance and
competencies, ways to facilitate international facul-
ty exchanges and certification, and ethics and sensi-
tivity to cultural differences will require increasing
attention.
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