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Dental/oral health

Partnerships key to successful dental/oral health research

We conduct clinical research in real-world dental care-delivery settings and spread and implement our research learnings broadly to improve oral health.

Areas of expertise include:

  • Temporomandibular disorders
  • Orofacial pain
  • Clinical decision support
  • Data mining (identify patterns and relationships of large data sets)
  • Periodontal disease
  • Simulated clinical training
  • Oral and systemic health
  • Dental provider-initiated tobacco interventions
  • Dental workforce models
  • Practice-based research in community-based dental settings

We have established relationships with leading clinical and academic oral health research groups nationwide and are a member of the Health Care Systems Research Network (HCSRN). One of HCSRN’s main efforts is the support of a common database structure (the Virtual Data Warehouse) to allow cross-member common research.

We are a leader among HCSRN members with dental providers who can share medical and dental research data. This makes it one of the few oral health data sets with more than 12 years of linked medical and oral health research data.

We are the administrative center of the Midwest Region of the National Dental Practice-Based Research Network, which is funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research. The network is a consortium of practices and dental organizations committed to advancing knowledge of dental practice and finding ways to improve it. Essentially, it is practical science for the benefit of real-world, everyday clinical practice.

Investigators

  • James Fricton, DDS, MS
  • Bryan Michalowicz, DDS
  • Brad Rindal, DDS

Key projects

Dental Decision Simulation (DDSim)

This project developed an Internet case-based tool. The tool simulates clinical assessments in case presentation format. It includes information such as hard and soft tissue findings, radiographs, health and dental histories and diagnosis and treatment plans. The tool gives the clinician feedback on how well their treatment plan matched current best available evidence.

Engaging Patients in Tobacco Cessation in Dental Settings (ENGAGE)

ENGAGE is a clinic-randomized trial. We are investigating the impact of an electronic record-based clinical decision support tool on smoking-cessation interventions initiated by dental providers.

Personalized Activated Care and Training (PACT)

PACT is a patient-randomized clinical trial of a tailored, online training program. It is supported by a telehealth coach to enhance understanding, compliance and successful self-management of temporomandibiular pain.

De-implementing Opioid Use in Dentistry

We will test the ability of a clinical decision support tool to support optimal, non-opioid pain management following dental extraction. This study is highly significant because it could provide data to guide dentists and policymakers on innovative and effective approaches to reduce the millions of opioid prescriptions written by dentists each year.

Key publications

Learn more about our Dental/Oral Health investigators and their publications by visiting Knowledge Exchange.

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