The six-chair Patterson Technology Center brings 21st century technology within reach of dental students at USC. A seven-week rotating externship in the facility, which is located within the predoctoral clinic, provides dental students with the opportunity to learn how to use the center’s sophisticated technology. The CEREC chair side restorative system creates a customized virtual restoration, which is then sent to the system’s milling machine that renders the ceramic restoration. Other features include digital radiographic equipment and intra-oral cameras at every chair, a digital panorgraphic X-ray machine and two digital clinical microscopes.

Community outreach at USC expanded with two new initiatives in 2005. The school’s collaboration with a leadership-training program, Women and Community, brings oral health education and services to children and their families through “Community Promotoras.” These women, trained as peer educators, stimulate positive outcomes in community health literacy. They educate community members on how to access available health services and how to ask the right questions to make informed decisions about their families’ health care needs. Another initiative educates and trains pediatricians, dentists, hygienists and others in oral examination techniques and identification of incipient caries in very young children.

In labs at the Norris Dental Science Center, the research of Paul Denny, Patricia Denny and Mahvash Navazesh, is giving a boost to saliva as an effective risk assessment tool. Using saliva, the team can predict an individual’s number of decayed teeth over a lifetime and which teeth will be affected. At the Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology, NIH planning grant recipient Malcolm Snead and colleagues are working on a proposal for a Center of Excellence in regenerative medicine. They hope to establish a multi-institutional collaboration to build on CCMB’s and other institutions’ significant discoveries toward tooth regeneration.