Passion and persistence lead to national honor for interim dental dean

The second South Carolinian ever to be honored with the American Dental Association’s Distinguished Service Award is a student favorite at the Medical University of South Carolina’s College of Dental Medicine, where she’s the interim dean. Patricia Blanton will receive the award in October. 

Fellow professor and vice dean of the College of Dental Medicine Tariq Javed called Blanton a role model and powerful public speaker. “She is a perennial favorite of her no fewer than 8,000 graduate and undergraduate dental and dental hygiene students."

Blanton hopes those students are not only learning how to perform dental work but also how to have an impact. “I hope they will learn the need to advocate fearlessly for causes they believe in. Our College of Dental Medicine students are special in their desire to provide outcomes-based health care centered on concepts of prevention of disease and the simultaneous promotion of health. At its best, dentistry is and always has been prevention-based health care and the provision of evidence-based health care has freed us from the empiricism of the past.”

Blanton said she was both shocked and delighted to be honored with the Distinguished Service Award. The only other South Carolinian to win the Distinguished Service Award, James B. Edwards, served as president of MUSC for 17 years. He died in 2014.

Blanton’s time at MUSC began just a few years ago. She moved from Texas to Charleston in 2014 to join a dental practice with friends, and the former Baylor University professor was asked to become a professor in MUSC’s College of Dental Medicine. Blanton, who holds doctorates in dental surgery and anatomy, accepted and soon became interim dean of the College of Dental Medicine in 2016. She will step down from that role in October when the new dean, Sarandeep Huja, comes in. 

Javed said Blanton’s award comes as no surprise to people who know her. “Academically, she has few peers, and as an educator, she has fewer. For 50 years, Pat has labored valiantly to innovate and educate successive generations of oral health care providers."

Blanton said her philosophy is simple. “Educate yourself on the issues, prioritize the prevailing issues into a strategy, identify the stakeholders and mobilize the momentum to help shape the profession. This has been my strategy for almost five decades and it has worked for me. In short, passion and persistence pay off in ways one can hardly imagine.”

Blanton’s passion and persistence continue to guide her life. "I intend to revive my practice in periodontics. I’m also working on a new edition of my previous book ‘Atlas of the Human Skull,’ and I am studying to challenge the Royal College of Surgeons examination in Oral Medicine, largely just for fun. My national and international lecture schedule is full, and that’s always a source of personal satisfaction.”

Javed said there’s a good reason Blanton’s speaking schedule is full. “She has presented more than 3,000 invited lectures both nationally and internationally, and she is recognized as expert in the field of local anesthetic delivery, oral medicine, orofacial pain management, periodontics and implantology.”

Blanton recently served as the keynote speaker for the Women’s Leadership Forum in Saudi Arabia and as the keynote speaker and moderator for the Women Dentists Worldwide panel at the organization’s annual meeting in India. 

Javed said Blanton continues to have an impact in their field. “In recent years, she has participated in clinical research related to health care outcomes across a broad spectrum of challenges for women. She educates and fearlessly advocates for our profession to assume its ‘mandated reporter’ role in responsible recognition and reporting of child and vulnerable adult abuse. For more than five decades, Pat has perfected the role of stewardship with regard to our profession.”