MUSC Associate Dean encourages students to serve with open hearts and open minds

If there is one message J. Mark Barry, DDS, MBA, Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), would like to impart on future mission trip travelers, it is to appreciate the privileges that afford them opportunities to serve abroad in low and middle-income countries. “There’s a real sense when you come back from a trip of how fortunate we are to live in this country and to have the things that we have,” said Barry. “It gives me and the students I work with a better perspective and sense of how to appreciate those things. For whatever reason, those blessings have been given to us, so it’s important to return those things—it’s as simple as that.”

Over the last five years, there has been a surge in the number of students taking trips abroad for global clinical and fieldwork experiences. As the shift from volume-based to value-based care delivery models in the U.S. take hold, this trend in global health service will continue its upward trajectory. National data for dental students traveling abroad for service-learning experiences have not been well documented in the past. However, results from a recent Harvard School of Dental Medicine study show that roughly 25 percent of its pre-doctoral dental students showed interest in traveling abroad to volunteer in fieldwork or conduct research. “The mentality among students today is so much more service-oriented than it’s ever been,” remarked Barry. “These experiences are life-changing and they did not exist when I was in dental school.”

Barry and his students travel mostly through the Dental Community Fellowship (DCF), whose goal is to provide opportunities for international service but to also encourage personal growth in the lives of its participants at home. DCF has partnerships in several countries, including the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Peru, Burundi, Haiti, and Honduras, and serves as a vehicle for introducing graduate dentists and undergraduate students to the delivery of dental care utilizing portable dental equipment in an international setting. Greater emphasis is placed on providing substantive and experiential learning programs that not only shape perspectives but the application of what students have learned once they are practicing professionals in the United States. No matter the frequency or location of trips, the reward is significant and different for everyone, every time. “Participating in these opportunities has re-shaped the way I think about the world,” remarked John Holliday, an MUSC dental student, and active DCF member. “I better understand the drastic disparity in wealth between the U.S. and many developing countries. I've also gained an appreciation for the people in those countries, their cultures, beliefs, and values.”

Holliday works closely with Barry in the U.S. and abroad on various projects. Ecuador, a country frequented by DCF, can be said to have the greatest need for dental health service provision out of the countries DCF services. The majority of MUSC dental students traveling with the group will do their mission work in Quito, Ecuador this year—a telling sign of the large unmet needs in the country. These trips are mutually beneficial: students are taught to perform with minimal resources and patients receive the care they otherwise would not have access to. “The students come back with confidence and enhanced skills,” said Barry. “This best prepares great clinicians for practice in the states and students for the rigors of dental school. But there are health needs that must be met in many of these populations—this drives us to make positive, longstanding changes in these countries.”

Rather than alighting to a safe perch, students’ perspectives can be changed simply by participating in work abroad and seeing, first-hand, how dental and medical practice in the U.S. seems excessive when compared to low- and middle-income countries. It is only when students go to a resource-poor country that they begin to truly understand their own excess and privilege having grown used to the many comforts living in the U.S. affords. “Going on mission trips has truly humbled my spirit, especially after seeing the poor and dispossessed cherish what little they have,” Holliday remarked. “And I've gained a desire to gladly give away my material blessings to people who probably deserve them more than I do.”

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