About Our Oral Health Initiative

 The Student Oral Health Initiative at Drexel University College of Medicine is a newly formed student health organization created in response to the current state of oral health, and the ambivalence of medical institutions to address the crisis of oral disease.  Though preventable, dental decay remains today’s most common childhood disease, and overwhelmingly affects the poorest and most vulnerable Americans.   According to the Surgeon General’s office, ~20% of third graders experience pain due to dental decay, thus causing needless suffering and an overall decrease in quality of life. As today’s medical students we seek to promote an integrative perception of health, which views oral health as a fundamental component of general health.  A child with poor oral health is a child that, necessarily, is not healthy.  We must recognize that oral health and general health are inseparable.[1] 

The Student Oral Health Initiative aspires to become a working model for other medical schools, as we believe that oral health is much more than a “student interest.”  As Former Surgeon General David Satcher said, “[oral health] is everybody’s business -- everybody who is concerned about health and health care.”[1]

Just as we now understand nature and nurture to be inextricably linked , and mind and body are both expressions of our human biology, so, too we must recognize that oral health and general health are inseperable.

-Oral Health in America: Report of the Surgeon General, DHHS ~2000