Courses

Limiting Architectural Barriers in Dental Office Design for Patients with SHCN (recorded webinar)

Course Description

This session will provide dental providers and their support personnel with a comprehensive demonstration of designing and implementing dental offices using an oral health equity lens with an example of the Oral Health Center for People with Disabilities at New York University and Canada. It will also help the learners understand how to design and implement a patient-friendly dental practice for people with physical, developmental, and cognitive disabilities from a San Francisco Dentist’s perspective.

Learning Objectives

  • Learn from a parent-advocate’s experience accessing specialized dental care for her kid.
  • Learn about a multi-disciplinary approach to the design process including the architect and equipment designers. As well as the design of a multisensory room utilizing other schools within the university.
  • Learn how to design a dental practice that caters to patients with physical, developmental, and cognitive disabilities who often run into obstacles when trying to access dental care.
  • Understand barriers to designing dental offices using an oral health equity lens effectively.
  • Learn ways to implement a patient-friendly atmosphere in dental clinics effectively.

**Please fill out the evaluation after you have completed the course in order to receive CDE credits.

Doreen Bestolarides

Doreen is a parent and professional advocate with over three decades of hospital nursing experience, with a focus in critical care. She has dedicated the direction of her nursing career, by developing a nursing role, to better serve hospitalized patients with Developmental Disabilities. She has continued that advocacy in her personal life to not only be a resource and educator in her own community, but to pursue her vision on the national stage through organizations such as DDNA- Developmental Disabilities Nurses Association, on the Practice Committee, defining Nursing practice standards; AADMD – American Academy of Developmental Medicine and Dentistry Board member and also serving as a Board member for ADHC- Alliance for Disability in Healthcare Education. She is the 2021/2022 recipient of the AADMD Family Advocacy Award. She retired from the hospital in 2020.

Dr. Alison Sigal

Dr. Alison Sigal graduated from McMaster University with an Honours degree in Kinesiology before attending the University of Toronto, Faculty of Dentistry where she earned her Doctor of Dental Surgery and Masters of Science Degree with Specialty training in Pediatric Dentistry. Between programs, she completed a hospital-based residency at Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto).

She is currently practicing in Milton, ON at Little Bird Pediatric Dentistry, which she opened in 2017 to provide comprehensive airway centric oral care to all children from birth onwards and persons with special needs of all ages. Dr. Sigal designed and built Little Bird with sensory integration at the forefront and the goal of bringing the natural rejuvenating outdoors, inside. It is a clinic that feels more like home as opposed to a traditional medical environment. In addition to the provision of patient care, Little Bird is focused on multidisciplinary collaboration, research, educating and training.

She continues to serve as a dental consultant to Special Olympics Ontario – “Healthy Smiles” initiative, and as a clinical director overseeing volunteers provide dental screenings of athletes at Special Olympics events. 

Dr. David Rothman

Dr. David Rothman is a Board Certified Pediatric Dentist in private practice in San Francisco and Associate Clinical Professor at Case Western Reserve University and Medical College of Virginia.  He completed residencies in General Practice at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia, Anesthesia at the Medical College of Pennsylvania and Pediatric Dentistry at Children’s Hospital Oakland and UCSF. He is past Chair of Pediatric Dentistry at the University of the Pacific and has been President of the College of Diplomates of the American Board of Pediatric Dentistry and the California Society of Pediatric Dentistry. He is President of the American Dental Society of Anesthesiology.  He is a member of OKU, Pierre Fauchard, ICD and ACD as well as a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.  He recently was guest editor of 2 issues of the Journal of the California Dental Association on Safety in the Dental Office and chaired the CDA CoVid 19 Clinical Care Workgroup subcommittee on Protocols, Guidance and Training. He lectures and publishes nationally and internationally on pediatric dentistry, safety, anesthesia and sedation.

Laura Sussman

Laura Sussman is a New York based architect with 10 years of experience in design for higher education institutions and healthcare facilities. She a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design where she received a BFA in interior architecture, and of the University of Pennsylvania where she received a masters in Architecture. As an Associate Principle of Education, Science, and Advanced Technology at HDR, she is passionate about helping institutions create spaces that foster learning, patient comfort, and design equality. Her work has been featured in various publications, most recently winning the gold award in Healthcare Design Magazine for the Oral Health Center for People with Disabilities project with NYU College of Dentistry.

Dr. Ronald Kosinski

Dr. Ron comes to us from Long Island where he was the Chief and Program Director a the Steven and Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, NY. Dr. Kosinski left the Children’s Medical Center in 2014 and moved to NYU College of Dentistry where he assumed the title of Director of sedation and Anesthesia .. In 2018 Dr. Kosinski was named Clinical Director of the Oral Health Center for People w Disabilities. Dr Kosinski was instrumental in its design and implementation.

Dr. Kosinski has maintained a private practice for over twenty-five years. Dr. Kosinski is both a pediatric dentist as well as an anesthesiologist. Dr. Kosinski loves what he does and is excited to have a presence in Manhattan.