Bracken Killpack: The Value of the American Dental Association – Organized Dentistry’s Public Works

Bracken Killpack
WSDA Executive Director 

The dawn of a new year brings many tasks: gathering tax documents, updating calendars, and working on well-intentioned resolutions. It is also the time to renew annual memberships. Thank you to those who have already renewed your Tripartite (ADA, WSDA, and local dental society) membership for 2023. For those who haven’t yet had the opportunity to do so, please renew online at www.wsda.org/renew.

A question I regularly hear from members is, “What’s the value of being a member of the ADA?” Some see more tangible value of membership in local and state organizations than in the national organization.

While there are many reasons why the American Dental Association is valuable to our nation’s dentists, I believe it is important to point out some of the less obvious values. Like road, electrical, water, and sewage systems help ensure stable communities, the ADA provides important infrastructure that sustains and enhances the work of state dental associations, local dental societies, and your practice.

Here are a few examples:

• The ADA fully funds the cost of Association Management Software (AMS) for the entire Tripartite. AMS is the lifeblood of any membership organization, reducing the time and expense of creating and maintaining data for membership, accounting, governance, and events. The fact that almost every state dental association and local dental society uses the same AMS enables better collaboration. By covering the costs of a consistent AMS for the entire Tripartite, the ADA saves dental organizations hundreds of thousands of dollars collectively annually, savings we pass on to our members.
• The ADA significantly reduces the cost of knowing what activities are occurring in locations outside of your own jurisdiction. For example, take the case of a local dental society working with a rural city to install the new water fluoridation tablet feeder system (developed with funding from the CDC and worth a deep dive in a later issue) and needing to quickly get technical guidance from a location that has already implemented the system. Thankfully, the ADA’s Council on Advocacy for Access and Prevention is able to quickly connect a component with needed resources because they constantly monitor water fluoridation activities across the country. WSDA and other Tripartite members routinely access ADA resources because it’s cheaper and less time-consuming than building and maintaining that knowledge in-house.
• The ADA invests in being a respected thought leader that furthers the practice of dentistry and makes our society healthier. Two ADA entities that everyone should know about are the Health Policy Institute (HPI) and the ADA Science & Research Institute (ADASRI). These organizations provide valuable data that can help us be better advocates and drive innovation in dental materials and other areas. Just as basic scientific research enables future business ventures, HPI and ADASRI help shape the future practice of dentistry and innovative public policy that aids in delivering optimal care.
• The ADA is also a great aggregator of best practices and distributor of useful toolkits across organized dentistry. Within the last few months alone, WSDA has used ADA toolkits on membership recruitment and retention, in-office dental plans, and minimum loss ratio legislation. These are valuable resources that help all of us avoid reinventing the wheel.

Think about how the quality of life in your hometown would deteriorate if everyone had to build and maintain their own roads, utilities, water and sewage systems. That’s the type of collective value the ADA provides for the entire Tripartite. Providing these infrastructure services is often thankless and only becomes front of mind when these systems are not working properly.

In early January, I participated in a meeting with my counterparts from across the country at the ADA’s Chicago headquarters. We discussed the ADA-maintained organizational infrastructure and improvements that we can make collectively. I am thoroughly impressed by the work of ADA staff under the leadership of former ADA Executive Director Kathy O’Loughlin and current Executive Director Raymond Cohlmia, especially in comparison to the state of our collective infrastructure in 2006, my first year at WSDA.

The ADA is a valuable partner to you and your dental practice. As we work together for the good of our patients and profession, it’s important to remember that the ADA makes this work much more feasible.