Thank you, Dr. Jeffcoat, for pointing out in March JADA the blatant bias in California’s law, allowing "outsourced" educational training for the dentists treating the state’s poor. When I first heard of it two years ago, I was flabbergasted. I might also point out that, by relegating the care of the poor to Mexican dentists, the law demonstrates a certain bias against these professionals as well.
As we try to craft solutions to the problem of dental access, we will undoubtedly see more of these well-meaning but poorly thought-out "solutions."
For example, Good Samaritan laws that exempt dentists who treat the poor from liability coverage might seem on the surface like a good idea, but they don’t say much about our society’s view of the human value of the poor—about 20 percent of Americans these days. The reluctance of agencies like state boards to approve cultural competency education for dentists because it is "not clinical" confirms that bias (and, yes, ignorance) persists.
I might also point out that the basic premise of the California law, that people need to be treated only by those who look and sound like them, is in itself a statement of bias. Our profession and our educational process would be well-served today if we considered cultural competency essential to our role as health providers, and view that concept as the ability to treat not just people of color, but the disabled, the poor the elderly, the working poor and, yes, even the affluent.
Thanks for calling our attention to this issue.
