objectives of The Japan Health Care Dental Association

The primary task of people engaged in medical profession is to work on behalf of patients who wish to live more healthily and in greater comfort. With advances in the medicine and other sciences and changes in relevant institutions and attitudes, the role of dentists has altered, although they have their spirit of making a contribution to society, as has always been exemplified by the leaders in this field. When we talk about the dentistry or dental treatment as practiced at the present time in Japan, we may well wonder if we can state with complete confidence that we are really contributing to society.

As with other sciences, modern dentistry has made great progress in both its knowledge and technique. However, not a few dentists have forgotten their ideal of eliminating oral disease. Instead, they have devoted themselves to cosmetic restoration of unhealthy teeth. Today, some practitioners, mistakenly, even regard aesthetic prosthesis as dentistry's primary purpose. Moreover, dentistry research is divided into minute sub-categories that are remote from clinical practice, and dental education is not always inspired by the spirit of making a contribution to society. The Japanese government's medical policy encourages dentists to spend more time on aftercare and gives them no incentive or motivation to exert themselves to prevent disease from occurring or recurring.

In fact, many dentists and dentistry researchers are aware of these issues. And with the achievement of economical stability, the increase in population aging and the decrease in the birth rate, people are increasingly interested in their health.

What should be done about this situation? Our first task is to inform people of the fact that dentistry can prevent the majority of dental diseases. But will dentists be ready to practice their profession after people are better informed?

Fortunately, dentists in certain advanced (advanced, that is, in dentistry) countries are changing from providing restorative care to providing preventive care, from the prosthesis of unhealthy teeth to the preservation of healthy dentition. In brief, they are willing to become people's lifelong consultants. As Japanese dentists, we would like to gather and organize, from the clinical viewpoint, what we have discovered and learned to date in order to utilize these data in our work. In theory at least, we are on a road that will hopefully soon lead to a situation where we prevent many cases of disease, approach actual cases in etiotropical manner, prevent recurrence in many cases, taking account of biological factors, and help patients preserve healthy their healthy dentition. Many factors can cause dental disease, and these factors have not always been explained with conventional etiological paradigms. However, as far as caries and periodontitis are concerned, knowledge and technique can be shared by dentists. We wish to have an environment where we can learn from and teach each other about the results of research and clinical activities, so that we can try to solve problems and overcome difficulties encountered during our work and discuss such questions together. For this purpose, we will also have to establish a new framework and procedures for presenting the results of clinical research that are more suitable to the environment we desire. During this process, dentists, researchers, and educators will have to work together to establish and provide more effective methods for preventing dental disease.

We hope that dental researchers, people involved directly with dental treatment, and people hoping for developments in the world of dentistry will identify with our desires and intentions and will provide us with invaluable support in presenting our concepts of this new health care management to both specialists and the public. We also want to help and educate those wishing to be dentists or dental hygienists so that they can apply these concepts in practice, and we especially help want to help those willing to be leaders in the field of health promotion. We intend to distribute research results that have been obtained and will be obtained during our daily activities to as many of those engaged in dentistry and dental health and hygiene as possible. This will, we hope, contribute to improving the general state of society.

With the aim of achieving these objectives, we have decided to found the association to be called " The Japan Health Care Dental Association"

Toshiaki Kashiwada
Takashi Kumagai
Kenji Oka
Shouzou Fujiki
Shoji Kato

The Representatives, the Preparatory Committee for Organizing
"The Japan Health Care Dental Association"

Activity and Mission of this Association