The Leon Levy Dental Medicine Library welcomes you to this guide about oral healthcare and accessibility to promote inclusive access to dental medicine services to people with disabilities and to highlight the limited research regarding dental practitioners with disabilities.
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Considering the field of dental medicine and oral hygiene is a subset of clinical health sciences, the guide includes the social and medical models of disability.
This guide aims to be a resource for researchers and students at Penn Dental Medicine (PDM) and beyond interested in research and oral healthcare involving patients with disabilities. The guide also contains resources about professional and legal responsibilities, the lived experiences of people with disabilities, and the field of disability studies.
PDM faculty are leaders in conducting oral health research with and providing clinical services to people with disabilities and special care needs. The visualization below highlights an integral author network.
Because of individualized experiences, “[t]here is an emerging debate over whether to use ‘person-first’ or ‘identity-first’ language. It is important that we recognize and understand the difference, and moreover how the language we use can make a difference. Disabilities touch people’s lives differently: some may experience it personally, through themselves or their children, and others may experience it outside the home at school, work, or in the community”
