Chapter 3. Create Awareness and Secure Support

Successful oral health integration will require support from major stakeholders in and out of your institution. Whether you seek change at the classroom, program, or institutional level, you will need to launch an awareness campaign that rallies colleagues and students around your program. This chapter outlines a five-phase community engagement process.

Getting out the word about the value of oral health integration can be fun and exciting. It can also be overwhelming. These tips will help you get started on the right foot.

Phase 1. Identify and Engage Leaders

If you are interested in large-scale change, such as the integration of oral health across all nursing programs, you will need to create a leadership infrastructure to support and guide your endeavor. This infrastructure might include several teams or committees from internal and external communities of interest. Members should represent multiple levels of leadership, including administrators, faculty, and students. Together, members will advise on the planning, implementation, and evaluation of oral health integration activities.

Steps to building your leadership team

Practice your “elevator speech.” This 20-30 second pitch should describe and spark interest in your project.

Prepare talking points. Outline how and why oral health can be a driver for interprofessional education activities.

Lay the groundwork for communication. Identify the communication channels you will use to keep in touch with those who show interest. Establish an email list, set up a website, or use such social media platforms as Facebook and Twitter.

Identify natural allies. Reach out to faculty who are already engaged in interprofessional activities.

Seek out faculty champions. Look for faculty who are already incorporating oral health into their courses.

Host a meeting to gauge interest. Use this opportunity to probe the ways oral health integration might serve potential collaborators.

Keep oral health integration on the agenda. Request that oral health integration become a standing item at faculty and curriculum meetings.

Create an advisory council. Choose faculty with experience in interprofessional education and consult with them regularly.

Look for collaborators. Identify outside organizations that share your goals and can contribute to your initiative. Take an inclusive approach to building your external network. By reaching out broadly—to ALL local health professions schools, public health entities, hospitals, and community providers—you may net supporters not currently known to be allies.

Phase 2. Connect and Create a Shared Vision

Once you have identified potential allies and stakeholders, energize your campaign by gathering interested parties, so they can make connections, discover common goals, and set priorities.

Suggestions for building community

Hold a kick-off meeting. This gathering will convene committed leaders and stakeholders who can generate ideas, engage in dialogue, and seek out common ground for developing a shared vision. Take this occasion to engage faculty in self-reflection. Ask difficult questions, such as:

Host networking events. Social gatherings such as lunches or breakfasts provide opportunities for network leaders, community partners, and other stakeholders to build and sustain connections. Rather than tackle big questions or complex issues, social gatherings should be used to build morale, solidify commitment, and create momentum for ongoing initiatives.

Engage the community with oral health media. Film and video screenings provide a creative way to promote oral and overall health. You can work media into a class presentation or convene students, faculty, and community healthcare providers in an informal social setting such as a local community center.

Phase 3. Educate Colleagues and Students

Support for oral health integration hinges on your ability to educate potential collaborators. The more members of your community know about the value of oral health integration, the more they are likely to support it.

Host lunch-and-learns for faculty development. Lunch-and-learns do double duty. They turn an opportunity to learn about a designated topic into an informal social event that can build the network of support for your initiative.

Conduct interprofessional seminars. Interprofessional seminars can convene students and faculty from any and all health professions who want to learn about a topic of shared interest.

Tips for conducting successful educational events

Plan seminars that address broad topics and endeavors. Encourage faculty to take small steps such as assigning one oral health learning module, using a video during a class session, unfolding oral health in a case study, or adding one lecture on oral health.

Open interprofessional seminars to those outside your institution. Participation by members of other academic institutions, primary care and community-based practices, and professional organizations can foster interinstitutional collaboration.

Create seminars. Consider topics that feature local and global oral health equity issues to attract a more diverse group of attendees.

Brand your seminar series. If you plan to host more than one interprofessional seminar, branding the series will help you gain recognition and build a following.

Phase 4. Grass-Roots Awareness Efforts

Lasting change begins with tomorrow’s professionals. In addition to institution-wide events, an effective awareness campaign must target student populations. Creating awareness of the importance of oral health and engaging students in elective interprofessional activities will generate grass-roots demand for more interprofessional opportunities as well as a desire to see oral health content in relevant coursework.

Phase 5. Secure Support

Once you’ve created awareness of the value of oral health integration and identified others who share your interest in weaving oral health content into the curriculum, you will need to take steps to secure their support. These steps will vary depending on the scope of your effort and the resources you will need to carry it out. Regardless, translating expressions of support into concrete commitments will require some additional work on your part. Consider these actions.

Meet with key decision makers. Conduct individual meetings with department chairs, academic deans, and program directors to discuss project goals, aims, and deliverables. Ask these leaders to identify faculty oral health champions whose support you can enlist.

Look for win-win situations. Explore ways that oral health integration can help the department, program, or school meet some of its established objectives. Work activities that address these areas of mutual interest into your plans.

Seek endorsements. Ask relevant curriculum committees to endorse your effort to integrate oral health content in undergraduate and graduate programs.

Go public. Share what you are doing with the institutional and mainstream press. Media coverage not only amplifies your voice. It validates your work in the eyes of potential supporters and collaborators.

Apply for internal and external funding. Even small grants bring recognition to your efforts, boost team morale, and facilitate progress toward your goals. Institutional dollars can act as seed money and leverage external commitments of in-kind or philanthropic support.

Attend professional meetings. Identify associations whose members share your goals. Use their gatherings to reach potential allies and build a broader constituency invested in your success. Conduct presentations to inform them about your initiative.

Draw on the expertise of outsiders. If your team lacks specific skills that would be instrumental in advancing your initiative, consider using grant money or other funds to obtain assistance. Consultants who offer grant writing, website development, social media, event planning, and other services can help keep your effort moving forward.