Global Reach

Promoting Oral Health Worldwide

NYU dental students have many opportunities to participate in public health initiatives in a global setting.  

Part of NYU’s teaching mission consists of preparing students for lives in a diverse world, and our faculty believes that such preparation is most effective through collaboration. Our relationship to New York City — the diversity of thought represented by all of our schools, colleges, and programs, and our internationally connected and collaborative faculty — enables students and faculty alike to broaden the scope and vision of knowledge through interdisciplinary and interprofessional learning in order to make a real difference in the world.

Student Service, Education, and Research around the World

For over 20 years, NYU Dentistry has provided the nation’s most extensive oral health outreach programs for New York City schoolchildren, the elderly, people with disabilities, and other underserved populations through various Community Outreach programs. Our Global Outreach program has also built an exemplary global outreach model that provides participants with a unique service-learning experience, opportunities to conduct critically-needed research, and an increased awareness of access to care issues, while fostering a passion for volunteerism and social responsibility. Participants on these outreaches speak of being challenged to re-think their roles as healthcare providers, and describe their experiences as "transformative." Equally important, the communities served by these programs are empowered by NYU Dentistry’s outreach model as sustainable oral health services become a reality. Outreach sites have included Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Pokhara and Surkhet, Nepal; Granada, Nicaragua; and Cape Town, South Africa. Within the United States, students have provided care and conducted research in Hudson, Plattsburgh, and Poughkeepsie, New York; Machias, Maine; and several villages in Alaska.