Planned dental college in Yakima will get founding dean
3 min read
Pacific Northwest College of Health Sciences in Yakima has a new dean to consider its planned school of dental drugs from a eyesight into a actuality.
Dr. Fotinos Panagakos will serve as the founding dean for PNWU’s university of dental drugs, which is in the progress phase, a news release reported. The new dental school will educate dentists for rural and underserved communities.
“I’m just pretty honored to have been selected. Dental schools really do not open up just about every other working day, it is more of a rarity,” he explained in an job interview. “And to be requested to consider on this duty and realizing how vital it is not only for the university, but for the Yakima Valley and the broader Pacific Northwest.”
Panagakos said the future stage is to recruit additional college.
Following that comes the accreditation method, which can take about 12 to 18 months, he explained. School management desires to acquire developing files and submit them to the Commission on Dental Accreditation.
“I would not want to get started recruiting pupils until we know we had that accreditation in hand,” he mentioned.
There is no organization opening date for the university, but Panagakos anticipates tumble 2025 as a acceptable time to welcome its initial class.
The College of Washington has the state’s sole faculty of dental medicine, nevertheless several dental hygiene educational facilities exist on both equally sides of the Cascades. Though UW’s dental school has a rural outreach plan for its college students, information and facts from the Rural Wellness Info Hub demonstrates gaps in treatment stay.
The entirety of Jap Washington — besides for aspect of Grant County — is viewed as a dental treatment lack region, in accordance to the RHIH.
An ageing workforce of rural dentists, combined with the frequently superior price of dental faculties and the need to shell out off pupil financial loans lead to the problem, Panagakos said.
PNWU’s dental faculty will just one day educate a dental workforce to enable reduce the issue.
“We’re likely to be education key care dentists, to go out into these underserved communities and provide oral health as perfectly as standard health companies,” he claimed. That includes screening for diabetes and higher blood stress, giving dietary counseling, and figuring out behavioral or psychological problems.
The purpose of PNWU’s dental faculty is reflective of the university’s much larger purpose to educate experienced well being care specialists to serve rural and underserved parts, Panagakos claimed.
Panagakos serves as associate dean for study and postdoctoral affairs at the West Virginia College University of Dentistry, but PNWU’s altruistic vision is component of what attracted Panagakos to the Yakima faculty.
“That mission actually resonated with me below in West Virginia,” he explained. “We have a comparable obstacle with underserved populations in really rural communities.”
His placement with PNWU starts remotely in early Might, he stated. He will keep on being in West Virginia to see out the remainder of its educational yr and graduation.
