Professor Marita Inglehart to give Diversity and Social Transformation Professorship lecture on March 313 min read
Ann Arbor, Mich., March 21, 2022 – School of Dentistry faculty member Dr. Marita Inglehart will present a virtual lecture on March 31 to commemorate her appointment as a University Diversity and Social Transformation Professorship.
Based on research she has conducted over the last 25 years, Inglehart will discuss, “Dental care providers and patients from LGBTQ+ backgrounds: Dental education and research observations from 1994 to 2022.”
The lecture, which begins at 3:30 p.m., is sponsored by the National Center for Institutional Diversity at U-M. It oversees the professorship program, which was established to honor senior faculty who have throughout their careers demonstrated a commitment to the university’s ideals of diversity, equity and inclusion through their scholarship, teaching, service and engagement. Inglehart was one of nine U-M faculty members who were named by the center as the inaugural recipients of University Diversity and Social Transformation Professorships in September 2019.
Inglehart’s lecture will discuss findings from surveys of first-year dental students between 1997 and 2022 regarding their knowledge and perceptions of treatment of patients from LGBTQ+ backgrounds. National surveys with dental students and dental school administrators showed a lack of education about treating patients from LGBTQ+ backgrounds. Inglehart will also discussion data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that identified risk factors for poor oral health and lack of health care utilization of members of the adult LGBTQ+ community. National surveys with general dentists and pediatric dentists completed the picture concerning attitudes and professional behavior related to pediatric and adult patients from LGBTQ+ backgrounds
Inglehart is a professor of dentistry in the Department of Periodontics and Oral Medicine and an adjunct professor in the U-M Department of Psychology. As the only dental school faculty member in behavioral sciences, she studies the role of diversity and social justice in dental education and in oral health care settings. Her research has focused on how to educate future and current dental care providers to become culturally literate, and on documenting how poor oral health of patients from underserved backgrounds affects their quality of life.
The lecture on Thursday, March 31, begins at 3:30 p.m. More information and the link to the Zoom presentation can be found here on the website of the National Center for Institutional Diversity.
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The University of Michigan School of Dentistry is one of the nation’s leading dental schools engaged in oral health care education, research, patient care and community service. General dental care clinics and specialty clinics providing advanced treatment enable the school to offer dental services and programs to patients throughout Michigan. Classroom and clinic instruction prepare future dentists, dental specialists and dental hygienists for practice in private offices, hospitals, academia and public agencies. Research seeks to discover and apply new knowledge that can help patients worldwide. For more information about the School of Dentistry, visit us on the Web at: www.dent.umich.edu. Contact: Lynn Monson, associate director of communications, at dentistry.communications@umich.edu, or (734) 615-1971.