CDA Essentials and CDA Oasis highlights 2024

Charting a Course: Strengthening the Oral Health Workforce in Canada

In June, CDA and the Canadian Dental Hygienists Association (CDHA) co-hosted a meeting in Halifax that included the national Canadian oral health care associations and experts in health care workforce analysis, modeling, planning and economics. The event included presentations from association representatives and academic experts, along with cross-disciplinary discussions about how to promote a robust oral health care workforce that can effectively serve the Canadian population. Read more...

Dr. Ashley Lindsay: The Father of Modern Dentistry in China

In the student services department at the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Toronto (U of T), there is a bronze bust on display. With a determined look, a noble nose, and his hair swept back, the man honoured by the sculpture appears distinguished and kind. A plaque explains that the bust was donated by a group from a university in China. Who is this man, Dr. Ashley Lindsay? And how did his life connect the U of T dental faculty and China? Read more...

A Brief History of the Oral Microbiome

The first observations of bacteria, made by Antoni van Leeuwenhoek though his hand-made microscope in the 1670s, were from plaque scrapings from his teeth. Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries of what he called animalcules revealed an invisible world of living things too small to be detected by the human eye. “He made little drawings of bacteria that we can recognize today,” says Dr. Jessica Mark Welch of the ADA Forsyth Institute. “Microbiologists have been studying bacteria in the mouth since the invention of this field of study.” Read more...

Big Picture: How the Canadian Labour Force is Changing

The labour force is shaped by large-scale cultural, epidemiologic and demographic changes, some of them sudden, like the COVID-19 pandemic, and others slow and steady, like the aging population. “Some describe the aging population as the gray tsunami. But I think a much better metaphor is a tide,” says Dr. Arthur Sweetman, an economics professor who studies human resources in health care. “It isn’t sudden or
unpredictable, instead, it’s a gradual process with huge implications that can be foreseen far in advance. This allows for preparation.” Read more...