Curriculum changes in a Brazilian dental school: The formation of dentists toward the community needs in oral health

The Brazilian dental education was, historically, linked to a process of transmission of technical knowledge with oral diseases been the main target of the educational activity and not the needs of oral health of the Brazilian population. The formation of dental professionals in the country is focused on the needs of a small layer of Brazilian society who can afford private treatments and this is one of the reasons for an oral health profile below the acceptable for the most t part of the population. The objective of this work is to report one case study of changes in the dental curriculum of a public school of the State of São Paulo, Brazil where, through financing of Ministries of Health and Education of the Brazilian federal government that intended to promote changes in the medicine, dental and nursing schools seeking to adapt them to the needs of the population and to the national health system. The case tells the changes happened at the Dental School through the curriculum, making possible, for the students, since the beginning of the course, to learn an enlarged concept of health and the community's health / disease process with the creation of a new discipline of health promotion and, in the sequence, another discipline focused on health education. The two new disciplines include visits to a specific territory of an area closed to the University that allow contact with the needs of the population besides educational activities in oral health. The sequence of the curriculum enables a clinical training however respecting the epidemiological profile of the Brazilian population and linked to the national public health system. These changes were accompanied by cycles of workshops for the faculty that included issues on pedagogic practice in health, teaching and learning strategies and formation of health professionals.