The National Dental PBRN is a consortium of practices and clinics devoted principally to the oral health care of patients, but whose members investigate research questions with practical impact that will improve the quality of dental care. The goals of the nation's network are to conduct national oral health studies on topics of importance to practitioners and their patients, to provide evidence to improve routine dental care, and to facilitate movement of the latest evidence into routine clinical practice. A key objective will be to conduct studies that will improve the knowledge base for clinical decision-making. Practice-based research is "practical science" done about, in, and for the benefit of "real world" everyday clinical practice. Benefits of enrolling include enhanced communication with patients and improved quality of dental care by contributing to the scientific basis of the profession. Practitioners are engaged at every step of the research process: generating ideas for studies, developing study design, designing data collection forms, feasibility testing, pilot testing, data collection and analysis, presentations and manuscript preparation. Studies in the pipeline include a cracked teeth registry, isolation methods used during root canal therapy, suspicious occlusal caries, human papilloma virus and oral cancer, patients satisfaction with dental treatment, smoking cessation study, TMJS treatment methods, social network and communication patterns analysis, dentinal hypersensitivity and prognostic factors for pain following root canal therapy.