In this University Seminar, two professors from the College of Dental Medicine will share how they are implementing custom-developed, educational multimedia tools to enhance dental practices in the classroom and in the field. Dr. Burton Edelstein DDS MPH, professor of clinical dentistry and clinical health policy and management, will demonstrate MySmileBuddy, a mobile application designed to prevent severe childhood tooth decay. Dr. David Albert DDS MPH, associate professor of clinical dentistry section of social and behavioral sciences, will discuss how multimedia learning modules developed in partnership with CCNMTL are enriching tobacco cessation education at Columbia.

MySmileBuddy is a mobile application developed by CCNMTL and Dr. Edelstein that guides health workers in assessing a child's risk for early severe tooth decay and counseling that child's family on preventative lifestyle changes. Health workers and families using MySmileBuddy will supplement their face-to-face interaction with the use of MySmileBuddy's mobile application on a tablet computer that calculates risk and assists health workers in providing educational and motivational activities about oral health. The application features assessment questions, interactive day/diet planner, videos and animation, as well as researcher tools including an online equation weighting tool for developing appropriate risk scores and an administrative area for viewing family data. MySmileBuddy represents a novel approach to improving dental health through emphasizing prevention rather than repair, exploring ways to move dental education and care into a community health worker context, and helping dentists learn to deliver counseling messages about behavior change. Dr. Edelstein will be conducting a pilot of MySmileBuddy in 2011 with at-risk families in Morningside Heights. This project is funded by the National Institutes of Health and is a CCNMTL Triangle Initiative project. Jessica Rowe, Senior Program Specialist for CCNMTL's Triangle Initiative, and June Levine, Project Manager, will co-present with Dr. Edelstein.

Dr. Albert will present Tobacco Cessation, an educational website that provides students in the Columbia College of Dental Medicine with multimedia learning modules on pharmacotherapy regimens for tobacco cessation. The site offers self-study lessons and activities, including immediate-response quizzes, treatment activities, four virtual patients, and demonstrative videos, which students are assigned to review before attending a required tobacco cessation seminar. Once students complete the online modules independently, learning content and working through specific scenarios virtually, they are then asked to act out potential encounters in the seminar and write reflections on their experience. The Tobacco Cessation website aims to support Columbia dental students' understanding of the available tobacco cessation pharmacotherapies and to empower students to effectively encourage tobacco cessation in their future dental practice. Cindy Smalletz, CCNMTL Educational Technologist, will co-present with Dr. Albert.