Your toothache doesn’t care about DEI. Dental education just proved it

This summer, the Commission on Dental Accreditation, the body entrusted with establishing accreditation standards for dental education across the country, did what it needed to do, moving beyond temporarily suspending several of its diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements to removing them from the accreditation framework altogether.Last year, CODA suspended standards requiring dental schools to “achieve appropriate levels of diversity among its students, faculty and staff” and to engage in systematic efforts to recruit and retain individuals from diverse backgrounds. They required that policies include the “admission of a diverse student population.” Suspension of these measures was a welcome first step. But it left the underlying mandates intact and the future uncertain. CODA has now acted more decisively. For predoctoral dental education, the commission has fully rescinded these DEI requirements, much as has been done by other health-professions accreditors, such as those overseeing allopathic and osteopathic medical schools.Comparable diversity requirements in dental therapy have also been rescinded. In oral and maxillofacial surgery, CODA has eliminated a standard that required programs to contribute to a “diverse and inclusive workforce” and that listed DEI and “belonging” training among examples of evidence of compliance.These are consequential changes, and CODA deserves credit for making them. Importantly, the commission has not abandoned the obligation of dental schools to create humane, ethical, and respectful learning environments. Nor should it. CODA continues to require programs to demonstrate a commitment to a humanistic culture and a learning environment characterized by collaboration, mutual respect, cooperation, professionalism, and ethical behavior. Those principles belong in accreditation because they are directly connected to the formation of health professionals and the treatment of patients.The distinction CODA is now drawing is precisely the right one. Treating every student, faculty member, staff member, and patient with dignity is a professional obligation. Ensuring nondiscrimination is an institutional responsibility. Preparing clinicians to care effectively for people from different backgrounds and life circumstances is fundamental to good healthcare. None of those responsibilities requires an accreditor to prescribe demographic outcomes, compel identity-based recruitment strategies, or ask institutions to organize themselves around contested political or social frameworks.I have spent much of my career in dental education — as a faculty member, administrator, dean, founding dean, and former CODA commissioner. I have seen firsthand how profoundly accreditation standards influence institutional behavior. What accreditors require, schools measure. What they measure, they fund. What they fund eventually shapes hiring, admissions, curricula, administration, and culture. That power should be exercised carefully.The purpose of professional accreditation is not to arbitrate political or ideological disputes. It is to protect students and, ultimately, patients by ensuring that graduates possess the knowledge, judgment, clinical competence, professionalism, and ethical foundation necessary to practice safely. Patients do not enter our clinics asking whether their dentist’s educational institution maintained a preferred ideological framework. They arrive with pain, sometimes frightened, and often with complex medical histories, financial concerns, disabilities, cultural differences, and, at times, years of deferred care. They need someone capable of diagnosing them accurately, treating them competently, communicating compassionately, and exercising sound professional judgment. That is why merit matters, and that is why the patient must remain the first principle around which professional education is organized.Removing DEI mandates from accreditation does not prevent dental schools from serving underserved communities. Nor does it prevent them from addressing disparities in a nonideological way, cultivating welcoming environments, or pursuing institutional missions. It simply restores an important boundary: Those choices should belong to institutions operating within the law rather than being made by an accreditor requiring a particular ideological approach as a condition of institutional legitimacy.DELOITTE PAID $21.5 MILLION. IBM PAID $17 MILLION. WHO’S NEXT ON TRUMP’S DEI HIT LIST?CODA’s actions also demonstrate something larger about institutional leadership. Organizations should be willing to examine their own policies, especially when evidence warrants reconsideration or when requirements have drifted beyond their proper mission. Reversing course under those circumstances is responsible governance, not weakness.A year ago, the question was whether CODA would merely suspend these requirements, waiting for the political winds to shift, or have the institutional courage to reconsider them fundamentally. We now have much of the answer, as CODA appears to be rightly choosing the latter. To that end, the commission must ensure that its revisions throughout related accreditation documents faithfully reflect the same principle and that discontinued mandates do not simply reappear under new terminology. Indeed, the direction is now clear, and it deserves recognition. Dental accreditation is returning its focus to where it belongs: educational excellence, ethical professionalism, clinical competence, equal treatment, and patient protection. That is good for dental schools and for the patients dentists exist to serve.Scott S. De Rossi, DMD, MBA, is the former dean of the UNC Adams School of Dentistry, founding dean of the Workman School of Dental Medicine, and a senior fellow at Do No Harm.