Advocacy

It was my privilege and great honor to have assumed the position of President of the American Association of Endodontists in the last year.  The year allowed me to promote Endodontics and to advocate for Endodontists when hospitals were overrun with Covid patients and the critically ill. It was my duty to promote with all my energy the importance of our work in maintaining health and the value of saving your natural dentition by utilizing the skills that only a specialist can provide especially when so many dental offices were forced to close early in the pandemic and for months thereafter. I was able to promote our expertise to every group I encountered and to argue over Zoom meetings with third party payers that utilizing an endodontist makes sense in an emergency as well as economically because paying for a root canal by a practitioner who does not have the skill and knowledge makes no sense financially when you must pay a second time for someone with the skill and understanding to retreat it the right way. Our specialty deserved and got strong advocacy during these difficult times.

The AAE advocated in 2020 before FEMA and state health departments for the availability of PPE; we advocated to the CDC and other agencies for vaccination of dentists as front-line healthcare providers, as well as delivery of vaccine to patients by endodontists. We have also advocated to insurance carriers in areas of coding and expanded endodontic procedures such as for PPE, orifice barriers and emergency coverage.

The argument we made along with all of the things we promoted within our Strategic Plan was that, in this threatening Covid environment, an endodontist knows how to safeguard you and solve your pain or infection problem. An endodontist knows how to protect you from aerosols and utilizes infection control measures with shields and rubber dams, and special evacuation measures that are not common and highly important to protect you the patient, and your doctor’s team. In helping our members within our own offices, we appointed a special committee led by Dr. Ali Behnia that worked on highlighting for our members the endodontic-specific best practices to protect against Covid-19 issues in the operatory regarding specific ways to stay safe and practice maximum infection control for viral protection. In addition, the AAE Foundation created a special funding track to provide research dollars to support Covid and aerosol research.

In addition, our AAE website made a concerted and focused effort to process and disseminate a Covid section with the latest information and research on the pandemic and best practices. We were also aided by the editors at the Journal of Endodontics to fast-track the posting of manuscripts that were to be published on Covid evidence, within in our own Journal.

In this way, we not only promoted best practices to our membership and dentists in general, but as is equally important, we were able to promote the fact that endodontics, performed and practiced by endodontists, is safer and better regulated than your average dental environment.

Communication

In 2020 we could see clearly the critical importance of our healthcare benefit to our patients and our country’s citizens. While the pandemic had closed doors for many front-line businesses, our unique benefit in saving the natural dentition realized a meaningful period of opportunity. The AAE experienced an important opening to present our message to audiences around our country as the public was locked down and isolated for much of April–June of 2020.

In that period of time as your President, I was able to reach millions of listeners with our message of seeking care for oral-facial emergencies from endodontists rather than overworked emergency rooms dealing with Covid stricken patients. I could describe our internal polls showing us that at that time, 90 percent of endodontic offices were open and providing emergency services using state of the art technology to render expert care and offer safety in its delivery. In more than 45 television, radio, cable and podcast live airings and tapings, our message of expertise utilizing microscopes and three dimensional imaging as well as protections from aerosol spread using rubber dams in all cases, was a powerful message. Promoting our website at: findmyendodontist.com, became an expedient way to complete this message, and demonstrate our care and availability. I felt strongly that these opportunities were an important way to bring people together under the common banner of health and humanity, and help build our name recognition.

Though 2020 and ‘21 has presented many challenges for the American Association of Endodontists, it has also proven our resilience. With the support and direction of the AAE Board and our committed and hard-working staff we’ve become a stronger Association, poised to accomplish great things in 2021 and beyond.

Education

During the many months of the pandemic when dental schools were required to continue a social distancing policy of students and patients, The AAE established and continues to support the provision of virtual didactic education to endodontic residents throughout U.S. and Canada each month in order to supplement education provided by their residency programs. Since April 2020, virtual lectures have been hosted by the AAE and delivered by educators monthly and these offerings are scheduled to continue through 2021.

In educating  novice new dentists, Our AAE Foundation supported the collection and distribution of an Objectively Structured Clinical Exam (OSCE), for graduating dental students that focused on endodontic decision-making, critical thinking and a process to make good judgements for novice dentists to evaluate their decisions on whether to intercede in the care of a patient or refer to a specialist. This was a meaningful and important assessment for dental schools, offered and developed by the AAE, as clinical teaching for the classes of ’20-’21 was often compromised by less hours and available chairs.

Annual Session

Inspired by the adaptive, resilient spirit of AAE members, we were able to            re-imagine the Annual Meeting for AAE’21 into a virtual format featuring: flexible opportunities to earn CE; community-building social events; a thought-provoking keynote speaker; an important general assembly vote on our AAE Constitution; interactive wellness activities and a virtual exhibit hall. We were delighted to see the membership respond with very high ratings for our speakers as well as meaningful registration and attendance. AAE’21 was highly successful and it was primarily through the superb efforts of Dr. Niki Ruparel, our General Chair, and her Planning Committee with AAE staff, who managed to accomplish the very complicated dynamic of this virtual meeting along with our very gifted speakers and presenters.

Our Constitution and Bylaws

As part of its annual self-assessment, the AAE Board has consistently identified board composition as an opportunity for improvement and a way to move into the future. Board composition relates to the Board’s success in building a board made up of individuals who contribute critically needed skills, experience and perspective to our association. Additionally, this responsibility includes a well-conceived plan to help the board identify and recruit members and cultivate officers, while examining and addressing gaps in areas of diversity such as expertise, race, ethnicity, age, and gender.  The AAE Board has desired for the last several years to introduce more diversity on the Board, and for the composition of the Board to be more reflective of our membership. The AAE firmly believes that increasing diversity will strengthen the AAE Board and result in all members feeling that their perspectives and experiences are represented by the leadership.

Back in November 2019, the Board approved moving forward with utilizing Association Management Center (AMC) as consultants to lead us through a Board Composition and Structure Project. The AAE Board and committees have dedicated much discussion to the importance of increasing the diversity of the Board. One result of these discussions has been the creation of a Leadership Development Program which is geared at identifying emerging leaders who are new practitioners and providing them with a foundation upon which to build leadership experience within the AAE, through information, engagement opportunities, and skills-based training.

We have set out to create efficiency of the Board’s work; develop balanced leadership: skills, experience and representation; hear all voices; engage all career stages of membership in the governance process; and move toward a competent, diverse, equitable and inclusive Board.

AAE’22 will be a seminal year for the AAE. Our annual meeting will bring to the membership a unique and pivotal opportunity to change our leadership structure after the membership voted to make structural changes to our proposal at AAE’21 and resubmit to our membership at our in-person meeting in Phoenix.   In the coming months you will be informed and alerted to our discussion in the ways we wish to govern our Association. In 2022, this will include a well-conceived plan reformulated by a special committee nominated by your Board of Directors, to help the board identify a reformed process to recruit members and cultivate officers, while examining and addressing gaps in areas of expertise, race, ethnicity, age, and gender.

I personally believe to my core that one of the most important decisions we must make in the year 2022 will be to look at our leadership development process and make significant and meaningful changes for our future members and leaders. Changing our leadership process within our AAE Constitution and by-laws will be significantly important to the future success of the AAE.

In closing, there is truly no forthright way to summarize the year we have all experienced together. It has been a privilege to be honored as your President this past year and to serve our membership and our Association. I will treasure my experiences and the many wonderful occasions I have experienced on your behalf.