26 May 2025

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American Dental Association, Penn Dental Medicine Announce First Living Guideline Program in Oral Health

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Oral health care providers and patients will soon receive more frequent, evidence-informed recommendations to advance oral and overall health with the establishment of the ADA Living Guideline Program.

This pioneering collaboration between the American Dental Association (ADA) and the Center for Integrative Global Oral Health at Penn Dental Medicine is the first and only known living guideline program dedicated to oral health.

“Oral disease is estimated to affect almost half the world’s population, and the number of cases is growing faster than the population worldwide,” said Dr. Ashraf Fouad, chair of the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs and Professor and Chair, Department of Endodontics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Dentistry. “The ADA Living Guidelines Program will provide dentists and other healthcare professionals continually updated, evidence-based information to help improve the oral health of their patients.”

Its first focus will be an update of a 2017 ADA guideline on the evaluation of potentially malignant disorders and oral squamous cell carcinoma in the oral cavity. The first recommendation is expected to publish digitally later this year in The Journal of the American Dental Association and on ADA.org.

Guideline topics are selected and prioritized by an advisory group composed of representatives from the ADA Council on Scientific Affairs and several other governmental and professional dental organizations.

“This initiative builds upon previous foundational work on guideline development at the American Dental Association and leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies to enable continuous and rapid incorporation of scientific findings from the biomedical literature into new and existing guidelines,” says Principal Investigator Dr. Alonso Carrasco-Labra, Associate Professor and Director, Cochrane Oral Health Collaborating Center at Penn Dental Medicine.

Guidelines contain evidence-informed recommendations formulated by independent panels designed to assist patients, oral health providers, and health care professionals as a resource when making informed care decisions.

Living guidelines uphold the methodological rigor of traditional guidelines but are updated as soon as new evidence emerges and is carefully reviewed. This enhancement of the traditional guideline process, which usually updates every 3-5 years, allows patients, the profession, policymakers and others to adopt the information more quickly.

“We are proud to bring this important service to our profession and look forward to improving the oral health of millions of patients through these guidelines,” says Penn Dental Medicine’s Morton Amsterdam Dean, Dr. Mark S. Wolff.

About the American Dental Association

The not-for-profit ADA is the nation’s largest dental association, representing 159,000 dentist members. The premier source of oral health information, the ADA has advocated for the public’s health and promoted the art and science of dentistry since 1859. The ADA’s state-of-the-art research facilities develop and test dental products and materials that have advanced the practice of dentistry and made the patient experience more positive. The ADA Seal of Acceptance has long been a valuable and respected guide to consumer dental care products. The Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA), published monthly, is the ADA’s flagship publication and the best-read scientific journal in dentistry. For more information about the ADA, visit ADA.org. 

About the Center for Integrative Global Oral Health at Penn Dental Medicine

The Center for Integrative Global Oral Health (CIGOH) at Penn Dental Medicine is the school’s first policy center, focused on seeking creative evidence-informed solutions to address unmet oral health needs by providing critical infrastructure to develop and test effective` interventions and policy. Within CIGOH, the Cochrane Oral Health Collaborating Center at Penn Dental Medicine engages researchers from around the globe in systematic reviews and meta-analysis of research to develop the best available evidence on oral health topics to help clinicians, policymakers, patients, and caregivers make well-informed care decisions.

Source: https://www.dental.upenn.edu/