A carpetbagging virile crayfish is invading Southern territory, according to biologists, and consorting with native ones in Missouri and Arkansas.
The consequences of such interbreeding is not entirely understood but may alter the genetics, ecology and life history of native species, researchers say.
Native to the eastern United States and Canada, the invasive virile crayfish has spread to much of the rest of the continent, quickly dominating habitats it finds. Fishermen may have helped the process by moving the invasive crayfish from one place to another as bait.
“The virile crayfish is probably the widest-ranging native crayfish in North America,” Christopher Taylor of the Illinois Natural History Survey said.
Virile crayfish (F. virilism) was first detected in the Current River basin in 1986. (L. Brian Stauffer)
Taylor is a co-author of a study that found that the Ozarks region of Arkansas and Missouri is ideal for crayfish because its water sources are plentiful, and the rocky streambeds offer hiding places from predators.
“The spread and impacts of an invasive species could cause substantial harm to this unique ecosystem,” said Eric Larson of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, another co-author of the study that appeared in the journal Aquatic Invasions.
The virile crayfish was first detected in 1986 in the Current River of southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas and has been found elsewhere in North America and as far away as England. Hybridizing with native crayfish, it often eventually replaces them. A voracious consumer of aquatic plants and other invertebrates, virile crayfish reduce the numbers of sport fish.
The researchers collected mitochondrial DNA from samples taken in the wild, then identified them in a process known as “environmental DNA,” or eDNA.
But as the team collected samples, they encountered a surprise — an invasive crayfish with native spothanded crayfish mitochondrial DNA.
“Initially, we were finding that some of the native spothanded crayfish, Faxonius punctimanus, had mitochondrial DNA sequences that were aligning with invasive virile crayfish,” said study co-author Zachary Rozansky of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “We also discovered the inverse: Some virile crayfish had the mitochondrial DNA of spothanded crayfish.”
Researchers found that some native spothanded crayfish (Faxonius punctimanus) had mitochondrial DNA sequences that were aligning with invasive virile crayfish. (Zachary Rozansky)
“We did not observe any differences in colors or patterns indicating they were hybrids,“ Rozansky said of the samples and by-chance finding. “They looked like one or the other.”
He said the results of this research highlight the possibility of missed detections of invasive species if hybridization occurs. “Although it is rarely documented, researchers working with invasive crayfishes should not discount the possibility that the invaders are hybridizing with native species,” Rozansky said.
Researcher Larson, whose lab specializes in using eDNA, said that the discovery of hybridization is a warning to those using environmental DNA when looking for an invasive species in an area with closely related native species.
OTTAWA, Ontario — Researchers at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) are hopeful that a new understanding of cellular defects related to Cystic Fibrosis could help pave the way for the treatment of the disease.
Cystic fibrosis is an autosomal recessive genetic condition caused by mutations in the gene encoding the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) anion channel. Although dysfunction of CFTR affects various organs, most of the morbidity and mortality in cystic fibrosis patients arises from lung disease.
A team in the College of Medicine led by Juan Ianowski (Ph.D.) and Julian Tam (MD) found that sodium transport is abnormal in lungs with cystic fibrosis.
The researchers, affiliated with the Respiratory Research Centre, studied the swine model of cystic fibrosis and used a specialized microelectrode technique that allowed them to perform experiments with very high resolution.
They discovered there is excessive sodium absorption in the small airways, a previously unstudied site in the body.
“A precise understanding of the cellular basis of cystic fibrosis lung disease is a prerequisite for the development of treatments such as gene therapy that have the potential to cure cystic fibrosis,” said Tam.
“CFTR modulators, such as Trikafta, can improve life for about 90 percent of patients. Our work is especially relevant to that 10 percent of people with cystic fibrosis who cannot benefit from these medications,” said Tam.
As per Cystic Fibrosis Canada, cystic fibrosis is the most common fatal genetic disease affecting Canadian children and young adults.
There is presently no cure for the disorder that varies in symptoms from patient to patient but mainly affects the lungs and digestive system. About one in every 3,600 children born in Canada has cystic fibrosis, which occurs when a person receives two copies of a defective gene — one from each parent.
Ianowski has been working with Tam for about six years and has been able to meet people with cystic fibrosis in his clinic. He said this adds a sense of purpose and desire to create applicable outcomes through the research he performs in the lab.
“In this context, I get to know the patients by name and see their struggles. Working with Julian has created a meaningful partnership, and we can inform and strengthen each other’s work,” said Ianowski.
WASHINGTON — In terms of mental health, apartment-dwelling Americans, especially those living alone, might have suffered more mental health problems during the Covid-19 pandemic than those living with their families in the suburbs, reveals the findings of new research from the University of Georgia.
The study published in the journal “International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health” reveals that individuals living in multifamily housing units, like apartment complexes, were more likely to experience mental health problems than people in standalone homes or condos.
Renters also had higher odds of experiencing mental health issues during the pandemic than those homeowners.
Research has shown that renters, particularly those living in high-density complexes, are more prone to mental health crises in general, but the pandemic appeared to compound that effect.
“In most renter environments, the resident doesn’t have as much control as he or she would like,” said Carswell. “Noisy neighbors, outdoor space, even whether the resident can own pets all depend on the rental company’s rules.”
“When you don’t have control, that can wear on your mental health, cause anxiety and make you a little more depressed.”
As social opportunities dried up, people living solo had a more challenging time mentally coping than those who lived with family members.
“One side of the coin is that sense of relief — ‘I live alone. There’s a much smaller chance of me getting the virus if I live alone,’” said Carswell.
“But there’s a loneliness epidemic out there too. As per our data, your mental health gets better as more people enter the picture. The more people in the housing unit, the better people’s mental health was.”
The researchers relied on the Household Pulse Survey data, a randomized online survey from the Census Bureau that collected information on how the Covid-19 pandemic has impacted people’s lives.
On average, over 80,000 households per week participated, with more than 1.5 million total participants over the study period.
The survey included a variety of questions, including employment status, food security, and job security. Participants were also asked about how often they felt depressed, anxious, or worried over the past week.
For renters, a variety of factors likely came into play. Tighter living quarters in high-density buildings mean an increased likelihood of running into someone in the hall and possibly being exposed to the virus.
Rounds of lockdown meant more people were staying home 24/7, potentially upping the probability of interaction with others in the building as well.
Using traditional amenities like apartment gyms or pools became a calculated risk — if they weren’t closed by management to curb the spread.
Renters also typically have moderate to low incomes, and the pandemic likely exacerbated already existing financial anxieties. The possibility of eviction was an ever-present threat until moratoriums were passed.
Regardless of a participant’s housing situation, mental health issues were pervasive throughout all residential units.
A mental wellness certification program for rental buildings does exist. Based on academic research studies, the CDC created the Fitwel certification system to improve health and well-being in buildings and communities.
But extensive protocols for protecting residents’ mental health are still fairly rare.
“The big takeaway is that — no surprise — housing matters,” said Carswell.
“In defining one of the problems of the many layers of problems that Covid-19 brings, mental health has been a hidden aspect of this whole pandemic.”
PITTSBURGH — Researchers have found a way to make deep brain stimulation (DBS) more precise through a study.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) suggest a solution that is resulting in therapeutic effects that outlast what is currently available.
The work, led by Aryn Gittis and colleagues in CMU’s Gittis Lab, will significantly advance the study of Parkinson’s disease.
DBS allows researchers and doctors to use thin electrodes implanted in the brain to send electrical signals to the part of the brain that controls movement.
It is a proven way to help control unwanted movement in the body, but patients must receive continuous electrical stimulation to relieve their symptoms. If the stimulator is turned off, the symptoms return immediately.
“By finding a way to intervene that has long-lasting effects, we hope to greatly reduce stimulation time, therefore minimizing side effects and prolonging the battery life of implants,” said Gittis.
Gittis set the foundation for this therapeutic approach in 2017 when her lab identified specific classes of neurons within the brain’s motor circuitry that could be targeted to provide long-lasting relief of motor symptoms in Parkinson’s models.
In that work, the lab used optogenetics, a technique that uses light to control genetically modified neurons. Optogenetics, however, cannot currently be used on humans.
Since then, she has been trying to find a more readily translated strategy for patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Her team found success in mice with a new DBS protocol that uses short bursts of electrical stimulation.
“This is a big advance over other existing treatments. In other DBS protocols, as soon as you turn the stimulation off, the symptoms come back,” said Gittis.
“This seems to provide longer-lasting benefits — at least four times longer than conventional DBS.”
In the new protocol, the researchers target specific neuronal subpopulations in the globus pallidus, an area of the brain in the basal ganglia, with short bursts of electrical stimulation. Gittis said that researchers have been trying for years to find ways to deliver stimulation in such a cell-type-specific manner.
“That concept is not new. We used a ‘bottom up’ approach to drive cell-type specificity. We studied the biology of these cells and identified the inputs that drive them,” she said.
“We found a sweet spot that allowed us to utilize the underlying biology.”
Teresa Spix, the paper’s first author, said that while there are many strong theories, scientists do not yet fully understand why DBS works.
“We’re sort of playing with the black box,” said Spix.
“We don’t yet understand every single piece of what’s going on in there, but our short burst approach seems to provide greater symptom relief. The change in pattern lets us differentially affect the cell types.”
“A lot of times, those of us that work in basic science research labs don’t necessarily have a lot of contact with actual patients. This research started with very basic circuitry questions but led to something that could help patients in the near future,” Spix said.
Next, neurosurgeons at Pittsburgh’s Allegheny Health Network (AHN) will use Gittis’ research in humans’ safety and tolerability study.
Nestor Tomycz, a neurological surgeon at AHN, said researchers would soon begin a randomized, double-blind crossover study of patients with idiopathic Parkinson’s disease.
The patients will be followed for 12 months to assess improvements in their Parkinson’s disease motor symptoms and frequency of adverse events.
“Aryn Gittis continues to do spectacular research which is elucidating our understanding of basal ganglia pathology in movement disorders,” said Tomycz.
We are excited that her research on burst stimulation shows a potential to improve upon DBS, which is already a well-established and effective therapy for Parkinson’s disease.”
Donald Whiting, the chief medical officer at AHN and one of the nation’s foremost experts in the use of DBS, said the new protocol could open doors for experimental treatments.
“Aryn is helping us highlight in the animal model things that are going to change the future of what we do for our patients. She’s helping evolve the care treatment of Parkinson’s patients for decades to come with her research,” said Whiting.
The research was funded by the Richard King Mellon Foundation, the Lane Fellows Program, the Michael J Fox Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health.
The study from the University of Illinois explores ways to reduce sodium in bread without sacrificing taste and leavening ability.
“Bread is one of the staple foods in a lot of people’s diets, and people generally don’t stick to just one serving of bread,” said Aubrey Dunteman, lead author and a graduate student in the Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at University of Illinois.
“About 70 percent of sodium in the US food supply comes from packaged and processed foods. The top source is baked goods, so reducing salt in that particular category would help to reduce sodium consumption tremendously,” said study’s co-author Soo-Yeun Lee, and a professor of food science at University of Illinois.
“We can’t completely eliminate salt from our diet, but we can reduce it to a healthier level.”
“Salt is an essential nutrient, and this is why we crave it. However, we consume more than we should, just like sugar and fat.”
“Salt is related to hypertension and other cardiovascular diseases, but it’s the amount that is the problem, not the salt itself,” said Lee.
Salt is also an essential ingredient in bread making as it contributes to the structure and flavor of the bread. It is necessary for the yeast to work properly.
Dunteman and Lee conducted an extensive review of academic literature on sodium reduction in bread. They identified four main categories: Salt reduction without any further mitigation, physical modification, sodium replacements, and flavor enhancers.
“The most basic method is just reducing the amount of salt in the product. That can be good to a point, depending on the original level of salt and equivalent in the recipe,” said Dunteman.
There’s always a minimum amount of salt you need just to have the bread function and the yeast do its job. So it’s a limited method, but it can help to reduce high levels of sodium intake.”
Another method is a physical modification, which involves the uneven distribution of salt in the product.
“Sensory adaptation occurs when you have a constant stimulus. If the salt is evenly distributed in a slice of bread, as you take more bites, it’s going to taste less salty because you’re already adapted to the first few bites,” said Lee.
“But if you have a different distribution of salt, alternating between densely and lightly salted layers, people will perceive it as saltier. So you can obtain the same taste effect with less salt.”
A third method involves the replacement of sodium with other substances, such as magnesium chloride, calcium chloride, or potassium chloride.
“This is one of the most commonly used methods in industry, but it can only be used up to a certain point before you get a bit of a metallic taste from these compounds,” said Dunteman.
The fourth method involves flavor modification with taste enhancers such as herbs and spices or even monosodium glutamate (MSG). The researchers note multi-grain bread also allows for more salt reduction than white bread because it has more flavor on its own.
Dunteman and Lee concluded the best approach to sodium reduction in bread would be a combination of methods.
“One of the four categories, salt reduction, is technically involved in all of them. Another category, salt replacement, is already heavily studied,” said Dunteman.
“We recommend more research into physical modification methods, as well as flavor enhancement types, and how to combine each of these methods with salt reduction.”
Finally, the researchers have some advice for home bakers looking to reduce sodium in their creations.
“If you’re interested in using less salt in your home-baked bread, you could try to reduce the amount to 50 percent if you’re using standard recipes that are widely available,” said Lee.
“You’d be surprised that the dough would still rise, though the bread would taste a little different.”
“You can also use flavor enhancers to provide the salty, savory, satiating sensation you lose when you reduce the salt. But that wouldn’t help with the rise, so you cannot remove salt 100 percent,” said Lee.
Black entrepreneurs in the United States recently received support from what at first glance seems a somewhat surprising source: an Israeli company.
But for online freelancer platform Fiverr, the choice to launch a business accelerator fellowship for black entrepreneurs was a natural one.
“Fiverr’s purpose is to provide anyone, no matter their race, religion, background or beliefs, the opportunity to build their business, brand or dreams. The U.S. is our largest market and therefore it’s incumbent upon us to use our platform and resources to help our community there however we can,” said Fiverr CMO Gali Arnon.
“There is still so much work to be done to ensure equality for marginalized communities, and specifically black-owned businesses, and so we’re thrilled to be able to support these incredible five businesses with the funding, mentoring and training they deserve,” she said.
The inaugural class of the Future Collective Fellowship Program includes five entrepreneurs from a wide range of fields who were selected from some 1,500 applicants.
The first business selected, Appdrop, enables non-technical teams to build mobile apps without writing code.
Appdrop, which enables non-technical teams to build mobile apps without writing code, is a black-led businesses supported by Fiverr. (Courtesy of Fiverr)
The second, Budget Collector, has developed an AI-based art adviser mobile app.
The third business, De L’or Cakery, is an artisan cake catering company that uses many ingredients imported from the Caribbean. The fourth, Hey Girl Hey, has developed a card game built to foster community connections among black women.
And the fifth, Keeyahri, is a luxury women’s shoe brand that aims to empower women through its unique designs.
Mentoring and strategy
Each of the Future Collective fellows will receive $24,000 from Fiverr, guaranteed placement in an accelerator program organized and orchestrated by black-led nonprofit organization 1863 Ventures and regular mentorship and guidance from Fiverr’s senior management team. The collective is also supported by Maestra, a business strategy firm.
Cohort members will meet monthly, and they’ll also be assigned online materials to review and complete coupled with regular coaching sessions. The fellows will have access to 1863 Ventures’ weekly entrepreneur webinar sessions, allowing them to participate in sessions relevant to their business and growth.
“Fiverr’s Future Collective is set to be an annual accelerator program targeting entrepreneurs and business owners in marginalized communities,” Arnon said. “The goal of the program is to provide them with the funding, proper training and mentoring to help them succeed long term. We are thrilled with our inaugural class of fellows and can’t wait to see where they take their businesses post-graduation.”
Explicit bias
Ebonique Boyd, co-founder of Budget Collector, said, “For me, the program is a chance for me to regain my spirit after dealing with the investor community.” (Courtesy of Fiverr)
“I had entirely given up on fundraising because I realized as a black woman the system doesn’t work for me,” said Ebonique Boyd, co-founder of Budget Collector.
“In my life, I’ve never been given the benefit of the doubt, and the first impressions people have of me are generally influenced by the characterizations they see on TV. The explicit bias I have seen in the investor community was like nothing I have ever seen in my life,” she said.
“For me, the program is a chance for me to regain my spirit after dealing with the investor community and to build a profitable company quicker than I could without the capital and the guidance provided by Fiverr, 1863 Ventures and Maestra. After our product launch and with some preparation with our team’s internal advisers as well, I hope to raise a successful round,” said Boyd.
Keeyahri founder Keya Martin said the Future Collective will help her company improve product strategy, among other things. (Courtesy of Fiverr)
Keya Martin, founder of Keeyahri shoe brand, said the Future Collective “will help me to identify gaps in my strategy, learn from others who have navigated similar situations, develop professional relationships with knowledgeable people, and build connections.
“Receiving feedback and guidance will aid in providing a viable lens that will allow us to improve our product strategy, project roadmap, business goals, and ultimately push the boundaries even further,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to building a team, partnering with more retailers, collaborating with brands and corporations, raising capital to scale and developing new designs. My ultimate goal is to build a global fashion house and in turn pay it forward.”
When people go out of their way to help someone else, it’s typically viewed as a selfless, empathetic act.
A study conducted on rats, however, shows that these animals go out of their way only to help a member of their own social group. This suggests that the motivation for empathy is not altruistic, but rather a form of seeking social reward.
The study, published in eLife and led by Tel Aviv University’s Inbal Ben Ami Bartal, found that the brain’s reward system was engaged when rats assisted a trapped friend. But when the trapped rat was from another, unfamiliar breed, the study rats did not help it and their brain’s reward system did not activate.
Thus, a sense of belonging is the dominant factor that affects social solidarity and not empathy for the suffering and distress of others.
A study on rats showed these animals go out of their way only to help a member of their own social group. This suggests that the motivation for empathy is not altruistic, but rather a form of seeking social reward. (China Photos/Getty Images)
Previous research had found that rats show empathy for their peers and that rescuing them from trouble can be as rewarding to them as eating chocolate, according to Bartal. Later research found that they only help members of their own peer group.
“Understanding the neural mechanisms at the root of these phenomena is imperative for the advancement of novel interventions aimed at eliminating social bias,” the study states.
The current study, which involved researchers in Israel, the United States and Canada, examined what change in the brain causes this behavioral difference that leads the rats to help only members of the same group.
“This research shows that the reward system has an important function in helping behavior and if we want to increase the likelihood of pro-social behavior, we must reinforce a sense of belonging more than a sense of empathy,” said Bartal.
“It is a major goal for society to understand the empathy gap for outgroup members: Why do we help some, but remain impervious to the suffering of others?” the authors of the study wrote.
“This study provides the first evidence for a common neurobiological mechanism driving empathic helping across mammalian species and highlights a distinct neural response to the distress of affiliated others. These findings provide insight into the way the brain determines the value of others’ outcomes based on their social identity and open a path towards predicting and influencing prosocial decisions.”
Bartal’s team currently is attempting to examine what happens in the brains of rats from different groups when they live together and develop social ties over the course of two weeks. They’re seeing how artificial brain stimulation can be used to “cause the rats to show empathy for the plight of rats from another breed.”
Was Christopher Columbus really lost when he made his famed voyage to the New World in 1492? New analysis of a document from northern Italy, written in 1345, suggests Italian sailors were already aware of North America, as a land dubbed “Markland” by Leif Eriksson, according to Icelandic sources.
An unpublished document from 1345 suggests, according to Paolo Chiesa, an expert in medieval Latin literature at the University of Milan, that sailors from Genoa — Columbus’ hometown — were aware of “Markland,” or “Marckalada” in the Latin source. The area is now assumed to be one of the modern provinces of Labrador or Newfoundland in Canada.
Chiesa called the discovery of this passage in the antique document “astonishing.”
The document, “Cronica Universalis,” was penned by Galvaneus Flamma, a friar of the Dominican order who lived in Milan. “We are in the presence of the first reference to the American continent, albeit in an embryonic form, in the Mediterranean area,” said Chiesa, who published his analysis of the document in the journal Terrae Incognitae.
Flamma, who was connected to a prominent Milanese family, wrote several works in Latin and is a source of first-hand information about the times he lived in. Cronica Universalis, which is unfinished and may have been his last work, was intended to be a chronicle of world history.
Flamma had heard sailors’ stories about lands to the extreme northwest, which they had discovered when seeking fishing grounds and commercial opportunities. He even collected information about Greenland — where Norsemen had settled hundreds of years before — that was accurate for the time.
A statue of Leif Eriksson — a Norseman credited with reaching North America long before Christopher Columbus — near the Minnesota State Capitol. (Mulad/Public domain)
“These rumors were too vague to find consistency in cartographic or scholarly representations,” said Chiesa, which meant that Markland remained uncharted at the time. Chiesa said the document “brings unprecedented evidence to the speculation that news about the American continent, derived from Nordic sources, circulated in Italy one and [a] half centuries before Columbus” made his trip.
“What makes the passage [in Cronica Universalis] exceptional is its geographical provenance: not the Nordic area, as in the case of the other mentions, but northern Italy. The Marckalada described by Galvaneus is ‘rich in trees,’ not unlike the wooded Markland of the [Saga of the Greenlanders], and animals live there,” said Chiesa.
Details about animals and trees are standard descriptions of good land, according to Chiesa, but they are not trivial, especially as the far north is a “bleak and barren” landscape — just as Flamma describes the inaptly named Greenland. Cronica Universalis is trustworthy, Chiesa said, because Flamma declared the origin of oral accounts he included, linking them to local stories, whether real or legendary, from different lands that he blends and reassigns to a specific place.
“We have no evidence that Italian or Catalan seafarers ever reached Iceland or Greenland at that time,” Chiesa said of the 1300s, “but they were certainly able to acquire from northern European merchants goods of that origin to be transported to the Mediterranean area.”
He said of the oral accounts that “the Genoese might have brought back to their city scattered news about these lands — some real and some fanciful — that they heard in the northern harbors from Scottish, British, Danish [and] Norwegian sailors with whom they were trading.”
Nautical chart of the Mediterranean Sea in the portolan style, probably drawn in Genoa circa 1320-1350, around the same time friar Galvaneus Flamma was writing his Cronica Universalis. (Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division)
In Norse sagas, three lands are mentioned that experts believe are on the Atlantic coast of North America. Markland is the name given to one of these by Leif Eriksson around A.D. 1000, according to the “Saga of the Greenlanders.” The location of Markland was not recorded but was known to be southwest of Greenland and is believed to be the southernmost of the lands Eriksson found.
“I do not see any reason to disbelieve him,” Chiesa said of the friar Flamma. He noted that nautical charts of the 1300s that were drawn up in Genoa and Catalonia showed advanced geographical knowledge of the north, which would have been gathered by actual exploration.
“These notions about the northwest are likely to have come to Genoa through the shipping routes to the British Isles and to the continental coasts of the North Sea,” said Chiesa.
But even if Columbus had heard of the lands to the northwest, he ultimately made landfall in the Bahamas, far south of the shores the Nordic sources had described. He is still celebrated on Columbus Day in the United States, though some states and cities have in recent years declared the holiday Indigenous People’s Day, in protest of the European conquest of North America.
Dr. Laila Hishaw turned an “ah-ha” moment three years ago into a mentoring program for youngsters of color who might want to pursue a career in dentistry.
Dismayed by the small number of black dentists in the United States — fewer than 4 percent of the total, according to the American Dental Association’s Health Policy Institute — Hishaw took action.
“I just put out a post, shared the stats, and said ‘whose kid can I mentor?” said Hishaw, a pediatric dentist in Tucson, Arizona.
“When I saw the responses, I saw that parents wanted their kids to know about dentistry. I said to myself I just have to mentor because if more kids knew about the rewarding careers in dentistry, then we’d gain that interest.”
Dr. Laila Hishaw (center, standing) traveled to middle and high schools before the pandemic to promote proper dental hygiene and career options available in the field of dentistry. (Courtesy of Diversity in Dentistry)
What started as a small-scale social-media campaign evolved into the Diversity in Dentistry Mentorship Program, a nationwide nonprofit that promotes the profession to middle- and high-school students. It features dentist mentors to provide training and counseling to pre-dental students.
“We try to reach them early,” said Hishaw. “Education is one of the barriers for students of color. If a student of color expresses an interest in the medical field, guidance counselors always guide them toward nursing or medicine, never dentistry.
“But, we also want to prepare them to be qualified to be accepted into dental school. I want them to get into dental school, but I want them to finish dental school. Our network of mentors gives them the skills to be successful in dental school.”
Representation and oral health go hand-in-hand
When Hishaw received her doctorate in dental surgery from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 2000, she said she was one of only a few students of color. But as a new practitioner trying to build and grow a practice, she was “kind of in my own world.”
Years later, the numbers revealed that professionally active black dentists declined from 3.8 percent to 3.7 percent from 2008 to 2018, according to the Health Policy Institute. Conversely, the number of Asian dentists increased from 12.9 percent to 17.1 percent, and the number of Hispanics increased from 4.6 percent to 5.6 percent. Dentists from other racial or ethnic background rose from 0.5 percent to 1.6 percent.
“Studies show that minority patients are more likely to visit medical professionals from their own communities,” Hishaw wrote in an April 2021 ADA News op-ed. “Without dentists of color, minority groups often go without the dental care they need.
“Much of this has to do with cultural understanding and trust — or lack thereof. Regaining the trust from black communities, particularly in older populations, is necessary, due to the historical unethical betrayal by government agencies,” she wrote.
The outcomes are problematic.
A report by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 2016 said children of color are less likely than white children to see a dentist and receive preventive care, and that people of color are more likely than whites to suffer from untreated tooth decay.
“If more communities had dental professionals who looked like them, would they be more willing and able to access the dental care they need? I believe so,” Hishaw said in her op-ed.
Fear drives diversity foes
While Hishaw is working to “lengthen and strengthen” the dental pipeline from middle school to dental school, the push for diversity has its detractors. Dr. Drew Jones, a dentist and former adjunct professor at Roseman University of Health Sciences, College of Dental Medicine in South Jordan, Utah, believes culture and excellence will elevate dentistry.
“Diversity may or may not elevate dentistry, but excellence will. When our country downplays meritocracy and excellence, we are hurting ourselves,” Jones wrote in an op-ed published in April in the Journal of the American Dental Association .
“Families are the greatest indicator of a child’s success,” he wrote, concerned about the number of out-of-wedlock births.
“The percent of births that occurred outside of marriage also increased for non-Hispanic black women (black) between 1990 and 2016, from 63 to 69 percent,” according to Child Trends.
“Change the culture to one which is more friendly to education, and the number of black dentists will change,” he wrote.
He also asserts that Hishaw’s largely white patient count and degree from a predominantly white university undermine her credibility as a proponent for diversity.
Hishaw declined to comment on Jones’ article. Jones could not be reached for comment.
The National Dental Association, which has more than 7,000-members and “promotes oral health equity among people of color,” released a statement in June condemning comments Jones made in a letter to Hishaw, an association member.
“For more than a century, our devoted members have treated patients with compassion and professionalism in the communities from which we come,” the association said. “But racism is born of that insidious combination of ignorance and racial privilege, and Dr. Jones’ letter is a clear indication that both are alive and well within the dental profession.”
The contents of his letter were not published.
Association president Dr. Pamela Alston told Zenger: “There are a lot of white people out there who feel that black people should be down and out all the time, and he’s caught up in that. I think he’s had some challenges in his life, and he felt he should have what she has. He’s jealous because she’s not like his stereotypical black person.”
In his op-ed, Jones wrote: “As someone who has lived in Asia for 10 years and whose wife is Chinese, I can speak with some knowledge about why Asians are ‘disproportionately’ represented in dental schools. In a single word: culture. Asian culture puts a high priority on education and especially in the sciences, engineering, and medical/dental areas.
“The Asian culture of education will produce students who have … ‘motivation, dedication and pride.’”
Next steps for Diversity in Dentistry mentorship program
Hishaw said her vision for her mentorship program is to raise the percentage of black dentists by double digits. One industry executive is teaming with her to help reach that goal.
“Lack of diversity in dental medicine deprives the profession of innovators and leaders, and can limit access to dental care in key communities across the U.S.,” said Chuck Cohen, managing director of Benco Dental, a dental supply distributor based in Pennsylvania. “Mentoring programs like Dr. Hishaw’s are particularly impactful because they touch the lives of future dental professionals in highly personal and meaningful ways.”
The all-volunteer program seeks to expand its network of mentors while staying in touch with dental-school students through video chats, telephone calls and text messages. A Diversify Dentistry Youth Summit is slated for Nov. 1 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“If we can increase the dental-school applicant pool of underrepresented students, surely the faces of dentistry will reflect that of our nation’s ever-increasing diversity,” Hishaw said in her op-ed.
“I don’t know whether that young, curly-haired patient of mine will become a dentist one day. I hope she’ll consider it. Regardless, I’m sure she will never forget how it felt to see a black female dentist who looked just like her.”
