A Gift of Impact: This Holiday Season, Consider Supporting Our Foundation
I hope that each of you in our AAE community had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and was able to enjoy it with family and friends. We are now in the midst of the holiday season, which for many, regardless of one’s family’s traditions, is a time of gift giving. I wanted to take this opportunity remind everyone of a most worthy recipient of your gifts: The Foundation for Endodontics.
The Foundation for Endodontics is the philanthropic arm of the American Association of Endodontics. Although Foundation is a separate entity from our association, it provides so much support for the AAE’s strategic priorities.
Many of you are aware of Foundation support of both Domestic and International Access to Care programs. Our hearts are warmed by these initiatives where our contributions help provide endodontic services to people in need and whose situations and/or geography compromise their access to care.
Perhaps less well known are ways Foundation helps strengthen our specialty. Some recent examples that come to mind: The Foundation for Endodontics gave financial support of the American Board of Endodontics for much needed updates to their database to make the application process for aspiring Diplomates a more user-friendly experience. Another example is the Foundation for Endodontics has provided major funding for the scoping review and the Delphi processes necessary to develop a Core Outcome Set. This will strengthen our specialty by establishing core outcomes to be utilized in clinical research. When investigators agree on which treatment outcomes to track, then more of their studies can be included in meta-analyses, which will in turn allow clinicians to base their practice on the highest level of evidence.
As a full-time educator, I am naturally enthusiastic about the ways that Foundation supports our educator community. I have personally benefitted during my academic career from many of their grants and fellowships. More than a decade ago, I was nominated to attend ADEA Leadership Institute, the flagship professional development program for academic dentistry. I received a Foundation scholarship, which provided significant support for tuition and travel to attend this yearlong program. The knowledge and skills I gained greatly enhanced my career in academics and AAE leadership.
When I approached my 10th anniversary as a full-time educator, I became eligible for another Foundation grant. The 10-year Anniversary Grant says “Thank You!” to educators who have stayed in academics, despite the huge discrepancy in compensation between academics and private practice.
Recruitment and retention of endodontic educators is a huge issue in light of the aforementioned salary discrepancy and high student loan debt. Tremendous support for educators is provided by the Foundation’s Endodontic Educator Fellowship. A fellow is selected annually from highly competitive application pool. This fellowship provides $250,000 in support paid out over 5 years, and has an excellent track record for retaining valuable faculty in academic endodontics. I am proud to have two former fellows (Dr. Carla Falcon and Dr. Vanessa Chrepa) on my faculty.
Many endodontic educators may work in institutions where they do not receive institutional financial support to attend meetings such as the AAE Annual Meeting or Insight Track. The full-time educator development grant will provide $1,500 annually to support full-time educators attendance at meetings. In the works are additional programs to support our part-time educators as well. Our patients as well as our specialty benefit when endodontics is being taught by endodontists!
Our resident community greatly benefits from the support of the Foundation for Endodontics. Resident Research Grants support resident their research projects as well as their attendance at our Annual Meeting. APICES, the annual resident convocation, is wildly popular with the resident community, providing them with networking experience, education, camaraderie, and a taste of the experience of being involved in organized endodontics. The Foundation is one of the many sponsors of APICES.
I look back on my career as an endodontist, which now exceeds 40 years. I know that I made a great choice of specialties and appreciate how much my family and I have benefitted from my career in endodontics. I also appreciate all that the Foundation for Endodontics does for my chosen specialty and has done for me personally. I have tried over the years to give back to Foundation with both my time and my dollars as generously as possible. I will always remember Dr. Clara Spatafore telling a group of us during her AAE presidential year that we should contribute the equivalent of at least one molar per year to Foundation. This year I plan to celebrate my 40 years in endodontics with a planned gift to the Foundation for Endodontics and become a member of the Freedland Society. This gesture could be considered a legacy or just “paying it forward”. I want those starting on their endodontic journeys to look back one day and be as proud of their specialty and as happy with their choice of career paths as I am.
In that spirit, please consider supporting our Foundation this holiday season. The future for endodontics is bright!