Your Toothache Doesn’t Care About DEI. Dental Education Just Proved It

Dental education has taken an important step back toward first principles.

This summer, the Commission on Dental Accreditation, the body entrusted with establishing accreditation standards for dental education across the country, did what it needed to do, moving beyond temporarily suspending several of its diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements to removing them from the accreditation framework altogether.

Last year, CODA suspended standards requiring dental schools to “achieve appropriate levels of diversity among its students, faculty and staff” and to engage in systematic efforts to recruit and retain individuals from diverse backgrounds. They required that policies include the “admission of a diverse student population.”

Suspension of these measures was a welcome first step. But it left the underlying mandates intact and the future uncertain. CODA has now acted more decisively. For predoctoral dental education, the commission has fully rescinded these DEI requirements, much as has been done by other health-professions accreditors, such as those overseeing allopathic and osteopathic medical schools.

Comparable diversity requirements in dental therapy have also been rescinded. In oral and maxillofacial surgery, CODA has eliminated a standard that required programs to contribute to a “diverse and inclusive workforce” and that listed DEI and “belonging” training among examples of evidence of compliance.

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