Stillwell Named Director of UAMS Oral Health Clinic
| LITTLE ROCK – Keith David Stillwell, D.D.S., has joined the new Center for Dental Education in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) College of Health Professions and will see patients in the soon-to-open oral health clinic. He also will work to establish a dental residency program in the center.
Stillwell has been named director of the clinical program in the center, which will include the oral health clinic and postgraduate programs for dentists in advanced general dentistry and oral surgery. The clinic is expected to open in January 2013.
Stillwell previously served as associate director of General Practice Residency at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. He received his dental degree in 1983 from the Louisiana State University School of Dentistry. He completed a general practice dental residency at the University of Colorado Health Science Center. In 1979, Stillwell received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Lyon College in Batesville.
Stillwell will lead the effort to secure accreditation from the Commission on Dental Accreditation for a general practice residency at UAMS and will serve as director of the residency program. The goal is for the center to begin accepting dental residents in 2014. By then, the oral health clinic — initially slated to open with five exam rooms — is expected to expand to include about 15 treatment rooms.
In the 2008 report to the state House and Senate Interim Committees on Public Health, Welfare and Labor, Arkansas had 1,331 licensed dentists and ranked 50th in the nation for the ratio of dentists per 100,000 population. More than half of the dentists in the state are age 50 or older, meaning that within the next 10 years, half of the existing dental workforce will reach or be nearing retirement age.
Hosting dental residents would increase the number of dentists beginning their careers in Arkansas.
UAMS is the state’s only comprehensive academic health center, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a hospital; a statewide network of regional centers; and seven institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, the Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, the Myeloma Institute for Research and Therapy, the Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, the Psychiatric Research Institute, the Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging and the Translational Research Institute. Named best Little Rock metropolitan area hospital by U.S. News & World Report, it is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has more than 2,800 students and 775 medical residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 10,000 employees, including about 1,000 physicians and other professionals who provide care to patients at UAMS, Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the VA Medical Center and UAMS’ Area Health Education Centers throughout the state. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com.