CCPH Fellows 2002/2003: Michelle Henshaw

Michelle Henshaw, Assistant Professor in Health Policy and Health Services Research, Boston University Goldman School of Dental Medicine, earned a BA in psychology from Columbia University, a DDS from the University of California, San Francisco and a MPH from Boston University. She then went on to complete a US Department of Health and Human Services, a 2 year Faculty Training Fellowship in Geriatric Medicine and Dentistry and a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in Dental Public Health, both at Boston University.

Dr. Henshaw is currently the Director of the Division of Community Health Programs at Boston University School of Dental Medicine. In this role, she manages the School's vast array of partnerships with hospitals, community health centers, public school systems, public health agencies and other health professional schools. She also oversees all of the Dental School's community outreach activities including several city-wide sealant programs, a school-based dental clinic and two programs for refugee oral health. Dr. Henshaw is also the current Chair of the Community and Preventive Dentistry Section of the American Dental Education Association.

Project Title

Evaluation of service-learning in dental and dental hygiene schools

Project Description

There is scant information pertaining to evaluating the outcomes of service-learning in health professional schools and virtually no information that relates directly to dental education. To address these gaps in service-learning, this project proposes to raise the awareness of service-learning in dental education and create an evaluation framework tailored to dental and dental hygiene education. The current status of service-learning, barriers to implementing service-learning and the evaluation schemes for existing service-learning programs will be assessed in dental and dental hygiene schools by developing and administering a survey to each school. The survey results will serve as the basis for two additional activities. The first will be to conduct personal interviews with the administrators of existing service-learning programs and schools that have tried unsuccessfully to implement programs or are currently in the process of implementing service-learning into their curriculum. The second phase of the implementation, creating an evaluation framework for service-learning in dental education, will build upon the information gained in the survey.

The dissemination of this project will also take place in two phases. The first step will be to publish an article on service-learning in the Journal of Dental Education. This will raise awareness of service-learning among dental educators and the administrators in dental schools and lay the foundation for further integration of service-learning into dental curricula. The second dissemination phase will focus on developing a monograph detailing a plan for evaluating the outcomes of service-learning in dental and dental hygiene schools. These results will be published as a monograph, as well as a separate article in the Journal of Dental Education and presented at the annual meetings of the American Dental Education Association and Community and Campus Partnerships for Health.

Project Product

EVALUATING SERVICE-LEARNING PROGRAMS IN DENTAL EDUCATION

Authored by CCPH Fellow Michelle Henshaw, this monograph provides an overview of service-learning and evaluation frameworks using dental education examples. The author provides an overview of evaluation methods, providing recommendations for appropriate methodologies for evaluating service-learning in dental and dental hygiene education.