American Society of Dental Ethics Update

The American Society For Dental Ethics

Dr. Toni Roucka

Drs. Beemsterboer, Roucka, and Garetto are frequent contributors to ACD’s catalogue of continuing education opportunities.

The year 2020 has been a challenge for all of us. With the cancelling of the March ADEA meeting, ASDE had to cancel its annual membership meeting and CE Course entitled “Divinity and Ethics: Parallels and Divides,” which was to be presented by Dr. Carlos Smith, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Dentistry’s Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The pandemic was just becoming a national problem and no contingency plans were able to be executed to salvage these events. ASDE hopes to present the course next year at the 2021 meeting. In 2019, ASDE put out a call to its membership to recruit more individuals to its leadership. The summer of 2020 saw these efforts come to fruition. While membership on the ASDE Board is fi xed by the Bylaws, the Board decided to create a new Special Committee on Leadership. The additional members would be a strong force collaborating with the Board about new opportunities for programing, member recruitment, and future service on the Board of Directors. The board invited six people who expressed interest to serve on this committee, these individuals include: Drs. Susanne Benedict, Regina Messer, Terry Hoffeld, Mary Baechle, Catherine Frankle-Sarkis and Robert Stevenson. At its annual summer 2020 Board Meeting, run virtually this year, the Committee on Leadership was in attendance. During this meeting, a major part was dedicated to future vision and new opportunities. The group provided invaluable input into program planning, business affairs, and other Board activities. Dr. Theresa Gonzales joined the meeting for a short time as well, giving her thoughts on how ASDE could help execute the educational mission of the College in the coming year by taking on specifi c ACD goals and initiatives that signifi cantly overlap ours. These include creating facilitator guides for the IU Ethics Videos, continued planning for future annual session Special Ethics Courses and developing ethics modules for dental education, thus also continuing the long history of fulfi lling ASDE’s mission as leading ethics education in dentistry. The Board believes that the Committee on Leadership has revitalized ASDE and looks forward to a bright future.

Save the Date! October 13–14, 2021

As we close out 2020 during another surge of the COVID-19 global pandemic, we remain focused on the well-being of our Fellows and families. It is the ACD leadership’s intent to convene an in-person meeting in Las Vegas in October of 2021, but we are equally focused on preparing for a virtual meeting if our preferred format remains untenable. Under any circumstance, our goal is always to welcome you warmly and provide a meaningful experience for each Fellow, and we hope you will make plans now to join us.