Texas continues to face significant challenges in ensuring communities have the oral health professionals they need. Approximately 2.5 million Texans live in federally designated dental health professional shortage areas, highlighting a challenge that goes beyond the overall number of professionals trained, but also where they practice and what helps them stay.
Across the state, dental schools and community partners are developing innovative approaches to strengthen the oral health workforce, particularly in rural and community-based settings. This webinar will spotlight efforts at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center El Paso Woody L. Hunt School of Dental Medicine and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Dentistry that are rethinking how Texas trains, recruits, and retains oral health professionals.
Speakers will share lessons from their work and explore:
How training experiences in rural and community-based settings can shape where professionals choose to practice.
Approaches to recruiting students and professionals to communities with persistent workforce needs.
Strategies that can support long-term retention and career pathways.
What Texas can learn from these models and where there are opportunities to build on what is working.
The conversation will move beyond the challenge of workforce shortages to highlight what communities, educators, and partners are doing to build an oral health workforce that is connected to the communities it serves.
This webinar is produced by the Texas Oral Health Coalition (TxOHC). TxOHC is funded by CareQuest Institute for Oral Health, with Texas Health Institute serving as the administrative home for the TxOHC team and work