For dental students at Texas Tech Health El Paso, some of the most important lessons about caring for patients happen beyond the classroom and dental clinic — in the El Paso communities they are preparing to serve.
A new $30,000 grant from the ADEAGies Foundation will expand opportunities for Hunt School of Dental Medicine students to work alongside community organizations, study barriers to oral healthcare and develop projects designed around the needs of local families.
The funding will support student research, bilingual oral health materials and community workshops while helping the dental school evaluate whether these efforts are making a meaningful difference for the people and organizations it serves.
“Here in the Borderplex, we see firsthand the challenges many families face in accessing oral healthcare,” said Faeq Quadri, assistant professor and director of research at the Hunt School of Dental Medicine. “At the same time, we see the incredible resilience, diversity and strengths of our communities. As educators, we want our students to learn not only in classrooms and clinics, but also directly from the people and communities they will one day serve.”
Learning from the El Paso community
The grant will strengthen two programs that are already required parts of the Hunt School of Dental Medicine curriculum: the Dental Community Practicum Program and the Dental Scholarly Activities and Research Program.
Through the Dental Community Practicum Program, students participate in community-based initiatives that give them firsthand experience with oral health needs and the barriers that can make accessing care difficult.
The Dental Scholarly Activities and Research Program pairs students with faculty mentors on research projects, helping future dentists develop the scientific reasoning and evidence-based decision-making skills they will use throughout their careers.
Together, the programs connect dental education with the needs students encounter outside the classroom.
The grant-funded project will directly affect about 120 third- and fourth-year dental students and support at least 15 faculty-mentored research projects and eight community-based practicum initiatives.
It will also support the development of bilingual oral health materials and community workshops, providing another way for the students’ education to benefit El Paso-area residents.
“Through these efforts, students will strengthen their critical thinking, research, lifelong learning, leadership and evidence-based decision-making skills,” Quadri said. “Their work will also help us understand and support oral health needs in underserved communities.”
Salma Elwazeer leads the Dental Community Practicum Program, while Quadri leads the Dental Scholarly Activities and Research Program. Students participate in community projects and faculty-mentored research throughout their dental education.
“At many institutions, experiences such as research and community-engaged learning are available only to select students,” Quadri said. “Here, we believe every future dentist should have the opportunity to develop these skills.”
Measuring what works for El Paso
The project isn’t only about giving dental students more experience. The Hunt School of Dental Medicine also wants to better understand whether those experiences produce meaningful results for the communities involved.
The school will evaluate how community-based experiences influence students’ understanding of barriers to oral healthcare, leadership and commitment to service. It will also study how participation in research strengthens critical thinking, scientific reasoning and evidence-based decision-making.
Just as importantly, community organizations and individuals who work with the students will have a voice in that evaluation.
Their feedback will help the school determine which efforts provide meaningful benefits and where its approach can improve — creating a cycle in which students learn from El Paso communities while the dental school uses those lessons to strengthen future outreach.
“At the end of the day, this project is about accountability and continuous improvement,” Quadri said. “We want to ensure that the time, energy and resources invested by our students, faculty, community partners and supporters translate into meaningful outcomes.”
The grant comes from the ADEAGies Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the American Dental Education Association. The project, “Strengthening the Future of Dental Education: Integrating Community-Based Learning and Experiential Research Training,” is led by Quadri as principal investigator.
While lessons learned through the project could eventually be shared with dental schools nationwide, its work begins in El Paso — with future dentists learning directly from the communities around them and using those experiences to better understand the oral health needs of the patients they will serve.
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