Our April 2026 post, “Quantifying North Carolina’s Dental Workforce Shortage”, discusses how NCOHC is exploring the oral health workforce and attempted to digest the impact of workforce shortage and how improvements can be made to increase North Carolina’s dental workforce.
This comes at a time when, according to the CareQuest Institute’s report, “Still Searching”, rural populations have worse oral health care access, utilization, and outcomes in comparison with their urban and suburban counterparts. According to the report, 34% of individuals living in a rural environment rate their oral health as fair or poor, compared with 27% of urban residents and 24% of suburban residents. In addition, although North Carolina saw a tremendous increase in dentist supply, more than 50% of all active dentists practiced in six of the state’s 100 counties: Wake, Mecklenburg, Guilford, Orange, Durham, and Forsyth.
This month’s blog, we will discuss efforts from the three dental schools in North Carolina – UNC-Chapel Hill Adams School of Dentistry, East Carolina University School of Dental Medicine, and High Point University Workman School of Dental Medicine – to increase dental workforce in North Carolina as well as provide services in underserved rural communities.
UNC – Chapel Hill Adams School of Dentistry
Founded in 1950, the Adams School of Dentistry (ASOD) was the first dental school to be established in North Carolina. Since its founding, ASOD has worked hard to address oral health inequities in underserved and rural communities. The program’s alumni association reported it’s over 7,000 alumni are in 48 North Carolina counties, all 50 states, and 27 countries worldwide. Recently, ASOD honored over 150 students as they earned degrees across Doctor of Dental Surgery, Dental Hygiene, and Advanced Dental Education programs. This fall, ASOD will welcome 82 students (out of 1,382 applicants). 62 of the 82 incoming students are North Carolina residents. ASOD has also created two collaborative programs that specifically address work in rural communities:
- Adams Rural Oral Health and Wellness (AROWS) Program – in partnership with UNC Health Sciences at MAHEC (Mountain Area Health Education Center), this program targets students interested in a career caring for underserved communities. This two-year program includes:
- Evening Learning Opportunities
- Week-long rural health immersion
- Semester-long clinical experiences at MAHEC’s Dental Health Centers in Asheville, NC and Columbus, NC
- Dentistry in Service to Community (DISC) Program – partnership with NC AHEC to integrate dental education with workforce development strategies and community-based clinical training sites across the state that prepare providers to service where they are needed most.
East Carolina University School of Dental Medicine
Since admitting its first cohort in the fall of 2011, ECU’s School of Dental Medicine (SODM) has committed to being a solution for the workforce in dentistry as well as preparing its students to serve rural and underserved populations. With over 500 alumni, 90% of its graduates are practicing in the state of North Carolina. SODM restricts its admissions exclusively to North Carolina residents representing 88 counties statewide.
ECU’s School of Dental Medicine has also received national recognition for establishing Community Service-Learning Centers (CSLC) across the state. The eight CSLCs are in Ahoskie, Brunswick County, Davidson County, Elizabeth City, Lillington, Robeson County, Sylva, and Spruce Pine. Through on-campus clinics and CSLCs, the school has serviced 110,000 patients in all 100 North Carolina counties. Fourth-year students complete 27 weeks of intensive clinical experience in real delivery system settings at the CSLCs and clinics.
In addition, ECU’s Hyde County Outreach Clinic – founded in April 2022 – provides dental services for residents in Hyde County as well as surrounding areas. Before the clinic was established, Hyde County was one of three counties without a practicing dentist (Tyrell and Camden counties being the other two). This past May, the SDOM added 49 students to its list of alumni dedicated to servicing underserved and rural communities across North Carolina.
High Point University Workman School of Dental Medicine
The youngest of the three dental schools in North Carolina, High Point’s Workman School of Dental Medicine. is the first private school to establish a dental school. The Workman School of Dental Medicine began in the fall of 2024 and will graduate its first cohort of 60 students in 2028. Through its Clinician-Advocate-Researcher-Entrepreneur (CARE) curriculum, students will be prepared for the future of dental medicine through innovative science practices, people-centered care, evidence-based decision making, and value-based practice models.
Through these three programs, there continues to be great concentration on building future leaders committed to servicing all 100 North Carolina counties, especially those in underserved, low-income, and rural communities.
Ultimately, solving North Carolina’s dental workforce shortage isn’t just a numbers game of graduating a higher volume of dentists; it is entirely about where those dentists choose to practice. True equity cannot be measured by a diploma count if every new provider still crowds into the same six urban centers. By embedding clinical education directly inside the rural communities that need it most, these three institutions are moving the needle from urban concentration toward genuine statewide equity. When a student spends weeks treating patients in Hyde County or working through a clinical rotation in Sylva, the unfamiliar becomes familiar; the intimidation of rural practice dissolves into tangible relationships and an understanding of rural business models.
This regional immersion breaks the cycle of geographic disparity by proving that high-quality, value-based care can thrive outside major metro areas. The future of North Carolina’s dental workforce relies on this exact kind of collaborative momentum, turning educational institutions into economic and healthcare anchors for the regions they serve. The pipeline is steadily rising to meet the challenge, ensuring that oral health access becomes a baseline guarantee for families across all 100 counties, rather than a privilege dictated by a zip code.