The nAME project

Our Goal

The Narratives and Medical Education (NAME) Project is a narrative dentistry and medical education project focused on understanding and responding to racism in dental care by generating an innovative, replicable community-engagement model that disrupts ineffective traditional systems of care and seeks to understand the experiences of marginalized communities. 

We achieve this goal through four main activities:

Created by Rob Crosswell from Noun Project

Oral Health Fairs at Public Libraries

Connect community members in need of oral health care with resources and services

Provide experiential learning opportunities for journalism, pre-health, dental and dental hygiene students

Assist with community focus group recruitment

Created by Rob Crosswell from Noun Project

With dental and dental hygiene students to explore their experiences interacting with and treating patients from underserved racial and ethnic minority groups

With community members from underserved racial and ethnic minority groups to gain insights into their experiences accessing and receiving oral health care

Gain a clearer picture of oral health care needs of communities, barriers to accessing care and challenges in providing care to these populations

Focus Groups

     Created by Takao Umehara from Noun Project

Narrative Dentistry Workshops

Provide space for dental and dental hygiene students to respond to and reflect on narratives developed from focus group data 

Enable dialogues around the systemic barriers to oral health care and establishing anti-racist, empathic oral health care

     Created by Tippawan Sookruay from Noun Project

Database & Curriculum Development

Create an open database to share the stories we gathered through this project and allow others to add theirs

Develop modules/activities for use with dental, dental hygiene, pre-health, public health and journalism students to explore themes around access to oral health care, equity in health care, oral health literacy and promotion, and health-related journalism

In collaboration with:

Funded by:

Important Disclaimer: The NAME Project is supported by the National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R21DE032161. The content on this website is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

With additional support from the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM), Regions 1 & 5 and the University of Maryland Department of English Public Humanities Initiative