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JOSEPH R. GREENBERG,

DMD, FAGD, FCPP

Fel low since 2007

By Jon Goff, Associate Director of Fellowship Relations

W hen did you become a Fellow and what initially

interested you about joining the College?

I became a Fellow in 2007. I was told about the Col-lege by two colleagues who were/are Fellows (Dr. Steve Brown, Dr. Orhan Tuncay) and invited by them to consider Fellowship. The more I looked the more I liked. It’s only gotten better.

Tell us about your career, your practice, and your

various teaching appointments in the area.

University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine conferred my doctoral degree (DMD), Postdoctoral Fel-lowship in Periodontics, and combined Periodontics/Fixed Prosthodontics Specialty certificates. I’ve served on the Penn Dental Faculty for over 40 years in numerous roles and attained the rank of Clinical Professor. In 2006 I was invited to join the Kornberg/Temple dental faculty as Clinical Professor of Restorative Dentistry and Course Director of Advanced Restorative Dentistry. I retired from the Directorship after 10 years but remain at Kornberg as a lecturer, seminar leader, and clinical teacher in the Advanced Education in General Dentistry Program.

I’ve given numerous Dental Continuing Education cours-es locally, nationally, and internationally and really enjoy speaking to dentists and dental students at any level. I’ve published over 30 original articles in peer-reviewed

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journals and have invented some frequently used de-vices and techniques employed in Esthetic/Cosmetic Dentistry. My private practice in Villanova, Pennsylvania serves a wonderful family of loyal adult patients who seek high levels of care and overall health. Our onsite private custom dental laboratory produces natural, artistic resto-rations for my patients and some close colleagues. I now have a part-time dental practice in Boca Raton, Florida where we work at least one day per month.

Are you allowed to tell us any good stories from your

time as Team Dentist to the Philadelphia 76ers?

I served as Team Dentist to the Philadelphia 76ers profes-sional basketball team for three years. It was a bad time for the franchise (just after Charles Barkley left and just before Allen Iverson came on) but I had some interesting experiences seeing another side of professional sports. I was “on call” at every home game for both home and visiting teams and got to meet many notable players of those times: Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O’Neal, Anfernie Hardaway, David Robinson, Dennis Rodman, to name a few. I was struck by the personal weaknesses and insecu-rities of many of the younger players (none of the above) who I will not identify, some of whom never finished col-lege. Here they were on a big pressure stage needing to perform to earn their big salaries, having to behave in public, and not feeling all that comfortable with a micro-phone shoved in front of their mouths with the cameras rolling. Lacking was education and experience in public speaking, personal finance, language skills, etc.

Inspired by the Team Trainer, Mike Abdenour, I investi-gated the possibility of a special, private “night school” for certain 76ers players to be conducted at the Universi-ty of Pennsylvania under the direction of Professor Hous-ton Baker. Dr. Baker and I were able to identify a team of willing, effective teachers to fill in the learning gaps for these young men. The players seemed pleased and very receptive to this, but unfortunately management said “no.”

In 1997, you founded Kids Smiles. Talk about the

mission of that organization and how it has grown

over the last 20 years.

Kids Smiles non-profit Children’s Dental Health Centers opened its first clinical facility in Southwest Philadelphia on January 15, 2001. It took me nearly five years of lob-bying, recruiting board members, seeking and hiring an Executive Director, finding and funding the start-up loca-tion to make it happen. The concept I brought to the mis-sion had three legs: clinical care, outreach screening, and onsite health promotion education. The vast incidence of oral disease and its devastating impact on young children in “at risk” communities was presented to us by Surgeon

General David Satcher in 2000. It was the first ever re-port on the Oral Health of the Nation. We didn’t realize and appreciate that tooth decay was the most common chronic illness of childhood, five times more prevalent than childhood asthma. That the most common reason a child presents to a Hospital Emergency Room is oral infection and that over 51 million hours of school time are lost annually in the United States due to dental pain.

Since 2000 we’ve learned that the “Oral Disease Epidem-ic” is worldwide, affecting children and adults, and may be a key initiator in substance abuse, related crime and violence, and incarceration. Experts who have studied this widespread problem conclude that we cannot treat our way out of oral disease. The best hope is prevention. Oral disease is nearly 100% preventable andincreasing the oral health literacy of the parent in each household may be a great place to start.

What is one area of the College in which you would

like to see more Fellows get involved?

The College of Physicians has a rich resource in its Fellowship. So many experts and teachers of such diverse health-related disciplines. It would be great to see more evening educational programs presented by the Fellows. Perhaps some debates on current topics in Medicine and Dentistry? I know I would be delighted to attend and/or take part. Perhaps a focused questionnaire would identify many interesting topics and many willing presenters?

Tell us about one of your favorite items in the

College’s Historical Medical Library or Mütter

Museum.

My favorite exhibit at the Mutter is the Hyrtl skull display. I guess I’m a head, neck and tooth “junkie.”

The Mütter Museum acquired this collection of 139 human skulls from Joseph Hyrtl in 1874. His work was an attempt to counter claims of phrenologists, who held that cranial features were evidence of intelligence and personality and that racial differences caused anatomical differences. Hyrtl’s aim was to show that cranial anatomy varied widely in the Caucasian population of Europe.