Building Bridges

Their commitment will create a new endowed professorship—the Fields-Rayant Professorship—that will help recruit a leader for this initiative, while providing foundational support to establish a new Center for Integrative Global Oral Health. It will be Penn Dental Medicine’s first center with a policy focus.

“Garry and Kathy’s generosity will have a far-reaching impact,” explained Mark Wolff, Penn Dental Medicine’s Morton Amsterdam Dean. “Dentists have always played an essential role in ensuring not just oral health, but overall health. The new center will challenge us to move beyond our traditional role of operating in isolation from other health care providers to develop a new, integrated approach that promises to make a difference far beyond our campus.”

For Rayant, the decision to fund this new center was the culmination of a journey that began 45 years ago. While completing his dental degree at the London Hospital Medical College Dental School, he developed an interest in periodontology, the study of the supporting structures of the teeth, and treatment of gum diseases. The leading programs were in the United States, and “Penn was the mecca in the field,” he recalled.

Fortunately for Rayant, he won an Annenberg scholarship to study in Penn’s famed postgraduate periodontics program. Penn Dental Medicine’s dean at the time, D. Walter Cohen, C’47, D’50, became his teacher and mentor, and eventually, a close friend.

After Cohen’s death in 2018, Rayant, by now an established periodontist and entrepreneur in San Francisco, returned to Philadelphia to deliver the eulogy at Cohen’s funeral. Penn Dental Medicine’s past, present, and future came together that day, as Rayant met the new dean of the School, Mark Wolff, who was in his first day on the job. The two men connected immediately, in large part because they shared a broad view of what dentistry and oral health could and should be—a view that extends beyond the traditional boundaries of the field.

The seeds of the new center were planted in 2019, after The Lancet, a leading medical journal, published a series on global oral health, linking it fundamentally to general health and issuing a call to action.

We have known how to prevent dental disease for over 50 years. An integrated approach to changing behavior is key. If you want to change dentistry, you need to do it through public policy.”Garry Rayant, GD’77

For Rayant, Penn was the ideal place to address this issue. Four decades earlier, Rayant had chosen Penn Dental Medicine not only for its renowned periodontics program but also for its long history of innovation. Today, Penn’s campus is home to faculty with expertise in many fields connected to global oral health— from medicine to social work to health policy. Just as important, the University has a long-standing commitment to working across disciplines to bring new approaches to pressing issues.

Initial goals for the new center include the following: establishment of a Penn Dental Medicine Master of Science in Oral Public Health degree; the development of curricula in oral disease epidemiology, prevention, and health behavior; helping future dentists become health advocates; and health policy and systems research from local to global perspectives.