Volume 8 • 2021 • Issue 6

Richard Holden BSc, DDS president@cda-adc.ca The Benefits ofOur Associations D uring the tumult and transformation caused by the pandemic, I’ve been thinking about how our dental organizations benefit dentists, who are members of our provincial and territorial dental associations (PDAs), as well as dentists in Quebec who are affiliate members of CDA. How do we serve dentists while at the same time enhance the profession and promote the oral health of all Canadians? In the next few years, PDAs in many parts of Canada will separate from their regulatory colleges and association membership at the provincial level will become voluntary in those provinces. I believe this makes it even more important that we articulate our purpose and value, and address the diverse and dynamic needs of dentists from coast to coast to coast. Most of us use practice services provided by CDA every day in our offices. We send our dental benefit claims via the CDA ITRANS Claim Service. We share private records with colleagues and patients via CDA SecureSend. We recommend toothpastes and other products to our patients that have earned the CDA Seal. Most dentists in our professional community took the Dental Aptitude Test (DAT) to gain entry into university, interacting with a CDA program before we even began dental school! Meanwhile, CDA is there to advocate for dentistry with the federal government and other national and international organizations, explaining the needs of dentists as health care practitioners and small business owners and offering policy solutions that address those unique needs. The pandemic and its impact on practising dentistry in a safe and practical manner has made this work especially urgent. The last 20 months have also heightened our awareness of gaps in access to oral health care in Canada, among other shortcomings in our health care system. We continue to advocate for better access and better care for vulnerable populations and the underserved. CDA also gathers data and conducts research related to essential issues and topics that will shape the profession’s future. We publish research and scholarship from Canadian dentists in JCDA.ca . We organized a National Advisory Task Force on the Future of the Profession. We bring together expertise from dentistry and other fields to make strategic decisions about how our profession should evolve as the nation’s demographics and economy shift. CDA is a united voice that speaks for dentistry in Canada. It makes dentists’ priorities part of the national conversation. As someone who’s been involved with organized dentistry my entire career, I’ve experienced the many benefits and true value of membership to my professional associations and to CDA. It’s one of the best values I can think of. Keeping dentists informed about the work associations do can be challenging, and we continue to explore new methods to engage the next generation of dentists. Not only do our efforts need to be vital and relevant, so does the way that we communicate about them. When I was a dental student at Dalhousie University in the 1980s, I received my first CDA membership card. To me, it had great symbolic value. I felt part of the profession. I felt included in a community. CDA continues to provide this core benefit: it brings dentistry together to work toward common goals that we could never achieve alone. From the President 7 Issue 6 | 2021 | CDA atWork