About Us

Eastman Institute for Oral Health is many things to many people. We are:

• Dentists who are studying to be specialists in many different areas of dentistry.
• Educators—experts and leaders in the field who are teaching the next generation of leading clinicians and scientists.
• Researchers who are making breakthrough discoveries in all aspects of oral health.
• Community servants committed to maintaining our namesake’s vision by providing quality care to the needy since 1915.

Eastman Mission & Strategic Plan

Mission

Eastman Institute for Oral Health’s mission is to improve oral health care through caring, discovery, teaching and learning.

The University of Rochester Medical Center’s mission is to use education, science, and technology to improve health—transforming the patient experience with fresh ideas and approaches steeped in disciplined science, and delivered by health care professionals who innovate, take intelligent risks, and care about the lives they touch.

Strategic Plan

Eastman Institute for Oral Health at the University of Rochester is unique among academic health centers in the United States: despite the absence of an undergraduate dental school, we have internationally recognized dental residency programs, vibrant oral biology research that is in the top tier of NIH rankings, and robust clinical services in all dental specialties with a strong community orientation.

Endowment resources of the Eastman Dental Foundation, a diverse patient population, world renowned educational programs, and extensive basic, translational, and clinical research in oral health coupled with the recently funded NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award, affords an outstanding opportunity for URMC Dentistry to build on its position as a leading institution for the training of future leaders in academic dentistry and for developing translational research related to oral health. Furthermore, this can be done while ensuring that George Eastman’s original intent in establishing the Eastman Dental Center – that of serving the community – is preserved.

Eastman Institute for Oral Health’s strategic plan calls for enhancing funding from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research by focusing on five translational research areas, enriching educational offerings to promote academic leadership in translational research, and becoming the preferred clinical provider for complex oral health needs and community service.

Our Goals Include:

• Position Eastman Dental as a high-quality, multidisciplinary oral health care provider in addition to its community service role, “Excellence Without Exception.”
• Educate dental academic leaders with translational research strengths.
• Develop and strengthen basic and translational research in dental caries and biofilms, pain and arthritis, developmental and systems biology, genomics and proteomics, salivary physiology and microbiology, and health services research.
• Develop a comprehensive research and treatment center for pain and arthritis.
• Strengthen and improve the integration of basic, translational, and clinical research.