Who Influences Dental and Oral Health Care in the United States?

Derek Gravholta, MS; Lydia Flemingb, DDS; Victor M. Montoria, MD; Sreenivas Koka, DDS, MS, PhD, MBA, FACD (corresponding author)

Abstract

Objectives

To identify and discuss the primary role, sector of work and gender of individuals, based on published rankings, who are considered to be major influencers in dentistry.

Methods

The relative rankings of “The 32 Most Influential People in Dentistry” in the United States published by the lifestyle magazine, Incisal Edge during the years 2017 (ranking list first published) to 2022 were reviewed. Each influencer was categorized according to criteria presented by Logeman et al (2019), specifically as having a primary role as an executive/administrator in industry (for profit sector), an academic/advocate (almost all nonprofit sector) or a government official (non-profit sector). Differences in the lists between years regarding included persons’ primary role, sector and gender were tabulated. Chi-square analysis was used to determine if the percentage of influencers had statistically significantly (p<0.05) changed by gender and by sector over time.

Results

There were 113 different persons named to one or more of the lists from 2017-2022. The primary work environment of influencers ranged from 53.1%77.5% (mean = 67.0%) in for-profit industry, from 16.7-31.3% (mean = 21.3%) in Academia/Advocacy, and from 5.0-16.7% (mean = 11.7%) in Government. The percentage of women listed as influencers ranged from 12.2-27.5% (mean = 18.3%). No statistically significant change in the percentage of influencers over the six years of the study period were observed for both gender and sector.

Conclusions

Dentistry in the United States, per this source, is influenced mostly by male industry executives in for-profit organizations. Despite its heath care mission, we identified a negligible number of influencers whose primary role was patient or clinician. This has implications as to the values and goals that influence dentistry.

Keywords

Industrialization, for-profit, dentistry, influencers, patient care, advocacy

Note: An earlier version of this article was published at 87(3) Journal of the American College of Dentists 29 (2020). The authors remain the same with the previous iteration also being authored by: Derek Gravholt, Lydia Fleming, and Victor Montori in addition to Sreenivas Koka. Their names were inadvertently left off the previous iteration of this manuscript. This update is based on an increase in the data collected.