Arbitrarily cordoning off the mouth from the rest of the body is the educational approach that, since 1840, has been responsible for the medical-dental schism that persists today, preventing oral health's integration with overall health. This divide has also thwarted oral disease prevention initiatives, access to services, and health equity. This article offers an educational plan for reunifying medicine and dentistry, which involves interprofessional education, dual degree training, integrating oral health into medical education, and integrated residency training.
Rebuff and Persistent SchismLong referred to by dentists as the "historic rebuff," 1 the divide between medicine and dentistry began in 1840 when physicians at the University of Maryland College of Medicine rejected a proposal from colleagues to include dental instruction in the medical curriculum, resulting in the formation of the school's separate College of Dentistry. 2 Dentistry's rejection of Medicare in the 1960s 2 exacerbated the longstanding schism and created the current imbalance in reimbursement structures for medical and dental care. 3,4,5,6 (Interventions deemed "dental" for patients with serious and complex oral, facial, and cranial conditions, for example, still incur tremendous financial burden on patients and families.) The depth of the division between medicine and dentistry is discernible even within a single organization in the separation of patients' medical and dental electronic health records, although integration would help coordinate comprehensive care, reduce inefficiency, enable and ease referrals, and facilitate access to diagnostic and treatment services.
Dentistry as MedicineThe separation of professional education, reimbursement structures, and records management has underscored the arbitrary separation of mouth from body, preventing oral health integration into general medical care and obstructing oral disease prevention initiatives, access to care, and equity. 2,7 Some leaders in health care continue to call for medical-dental integration. The Mayo Clinic, for example, maintains an oral surgery service it included over a century ago. 8 Charles H. Mayo, MD, addressed the American Dental Association in 1928, stating: "The practice of medicine includes dentistry and dentistry is the practice of a special branch of medicine." 9 In 1962, Surgeon General
