Penn’s School of Dental Medicine is leading the way in a collaborative, systems-thinking approach to clinical education.
By Dr. Faizan Alawi, Vice Dean of Academics, Penn Dental Medicine
Oral health is shaped by environmental, social, economic, and systemic determinants that extend far beyond the traditional boundaries of clinical dentistry. As healthcare professionals who maintain regular and long-term relationships with patients, dentists and dental auxiliaries are uniquely positioned to promote public health, advocate for environmentally responsible healthcare practices, and contribute to broader conversations surrounding sustainability and health equity.
However, without intentional education and awareness in these areas, the profession’s potential to contribute meaningfully to these larger initiatives remains limited. Dental education must therefore continue evolving to ensure graduates possess the competencies needed to address increasingly complex healthcare challenges through collaboration, advocacy, and systems thinking.
In 2024, Penn Dental Medicine launched a new predoctoral curriculum emphasizing integrative learning while incorporating Planetary Health, One Health, and environmental sustainability as guiding principles. Unlike many North American dental schools that have introduced isolated lectures, electives, or student-led sustainability initiatives, Penn Dental Medicine adopted a longitudinal approach by embedding these concepts throughout the entire four-year curriculum. This reflects the belief that sustainability and systems-based thinking should become core professional competencies rather than peripheral topics.
The curriculum currently includes 18 lectures and educational topics that are taught or co-taught by faculty from across the University of Pennsylvania, including Penn Dental Medicine, the Schools of Veterinary Medicine, Medicine, and Nursing, as well as the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media. This interdisciplinary collaboration reinforces the interconnected principles of One Health and Planetary Health while exposing students to the broader systems that influence human and environmental health.
The development of this comprehensive curriculum revision required nearly two years of faculty-wide collaboration. Faculty champions worked across disciplines to identify, integrate, and sequence sustainability-related content within existing biomedical, behavioral, and clinical courses, and specifically designed to fit within the overarching course theme. The initiative begins early, with first-year students receiving an introductory lecture on One Health within their first course. Other examples include “Food Systems and One Health for the Whole of Society,” and “Environmentally Safe Disposal of Dental Materials, Including Amalgam,” in the first year; “Climate Change and Mental Health and Resilience” in the second year, and “Environmental Sustainability in Dental Practice: Delivering Oral Health for People, Planet, Peace and Prosperity” in the third year.
Beyond classroom instruction, Penn Dental Medicine also incorporated sustainability-focused reflection exercises into the clinical curriculum. All second-, third-, and fourth-year students are now required to evaluate the environmental implications of proposed treatment plans. This exercise is intended to increase awareness rather than guide patient care decisions. Students assess factors such as biodegradability of materials, projected waste generation, energy consumption, and the estimated carbon footprint associated with treatment delivery. Importantly, students are also asked to consider how sustainability can be balanced with providing optimal patient-centered care, emphasizing that environmental responsibility must coexist with clinical effectiveness and ethics.
Penn Dental Medicine additionally completed a comprehensive mapping of its didactic curriculum to the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); these maps are included in the course syllabi. This initiative situates oral health education within the broader global agenda for sustainable development and demonstrates how dentistry intersects with issues such as health equity, public health, responsible consumption, and climate action. By connecting curricular content to the SDGs, students and faculty gain a greater appreciation for dentistry’s role in advancing both societal and planetary well-being.
Most recently, Penn Dental Medicine received funding through the Penn Integrating Sustainability Across the Curriculum (ISAC) program to further expand and refine this important educational initiative. Sustainable healthcare offers benefits beyond environmental protection alone, including improved preventive health strategies, stronger patient engagement, and greater economic sustainability. As awareness grows regarding healthcare’s environmental impact, dentistry has an ethical responsibility to contribute to more sustainable models of care. Education has been identified as one of the most important strategies for reducing healthcare-related environmental impacts, and Penn Dental Medicine is helping to establish a forward-thinking model for integrating sustainability into dental education.