Association for Dental Education in Europe

Learning together to improve oral health and quality of life

Plenary Session 3: Sustainability in Action

Friday, 22nd August 2025 - 11:30 to 13:00
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Timezone: 

Dublin (IST, UTC+1)

Venue: 

Dargan Auditorium TCDBS

Pre-register as part of your ADEE 2025 meeting registration
Session synopsis: 
We bring ADEE 2025 and our 50th annual meeting to a close with our final plenary focusing as we have for the past three years on the importance of sustainability in academic and clinical practice.

Commencing with a panel discussion chaired by Dr Brett Duane, Dublin Dental University Hospital, the session discusses how environmental sustainability has been incorporated into dental education, and operationalised within hospital strategy.

The aim is to demonstrate how the carbon footprint of a dental teaching hospital can be addressed, reflecting on

  1. How education leads have changed curriculum, dental learners have experienced sustainability research /QI projects during their education or training, and
  2. How sustainability is being embedded into strategy in dental hospitals. We hope the session generates ideas for how to further incorporate environmental sustainability into dental education. 

Delegates will have an opportunity to engage with the panel through Q&A.

We will close out the session with the presentation of:

  • The ADEE / EDSA / Henry Schein Oral Health Professional Educators’ Practice Green and Social Excellence Awards 2025
  • ADEE LEADER School visit and visitation panel recognition will also be made
  • Our session close with Prof Gabor Gerber presenting Budapest as the host city for ADEE 2026
Programme: 
11:20 Delegates  and award recipients are asked to take their seats in the Dargan auditorium  

11:30

Welcome to Plenary 3

11:35

Panel discussion: Sustainability in action 
12:20

Delegate Question and answer session 

12:30

The ADEE / EDSA / Henry Schein Oral Health Professional Educators’ Practice Green and Social Excellence Awards 2025
12:50 Recognition of ADEE LEADER School visits and visitation panels

12:55

 Presentation of ADEE 2026 Budapest 
13:00

Closing Remarks 
Chair: 

Upen Patel

Associate Clinical Professor & Honorary Consultant Restorative Dentistry
University of Birmingham, Dental Hospital, UK

Dr Upen Patel was appointed as a full-time Clinical Lecturer in Restorative Dentistry at the University of Birmingham (UK) in 2008. He has since completed his PhD studies, appointed lead for eLearning, Assessment and is the Deputy Head of Undergraduate Education for the School of Dentistry. He is currently training to become a Consultant in Restorative Dentistry. Upen teaches undergraduate dental students in all five years of the BDS degree programme and delivers postgraduate training for dental-care-professionals. Upen is Chairperson for the UK & RoI Dental Schools Council Assessment in Dental Education Group, a member of the Executive Committee of the Association for Dental Education in Europe and a member of the Editorial Board for the European Journal of Dental Education. Upen has led many Special Interest Groups and initiatives with ADEE and has been involved in facilitating and coordinating workshops for ADEE-ADEA collaborations. Upen is an ADEE, Executive Committee Member.

 

Julia Davies

ADEE Treasurer
Association for Dental Education in Europe (ADEE)

Professor Julia Davies ADEE Treasurer from January 2021 - December 2026. She is Professor at the Department of Oral Biology in Malmö University. Sweden. Her special educational interests are assessment in relation to student-centered, activity-based learning and the challenges associated with integration of basic sciences into clinical teaching in the dental curriculum.

Speakers: 

Brett Duane

Associate Professor in Dental Public Health
Dublin Dental University Hospital, Trinity College Dublin

Dr Brett Duane is Associate Professor in Dental Public Health at Trinity College Dublin and a leading expert in sustainable healthcare. Originally from New Zealand, he holds degrees in dentistry (University of Otago), health management (University of Newcastle, Australia), public health (University of Glasgow), and a PhD in dentistry from the University of Turku. His early career included public health roles in Australia and Scotland, and he later served as Consultant in Dental Public Health with Public Health England. At Trinity, he leads research and teaching on the environmental sustainability of oral healthcare and co-developed Ireland’s first postgraduate programme in dental public health.

Brett is the coordinator of KitNewCare, a €6 million EU Horizon project focused on reducing the environmental impact of kidney care. He has published over 150 articles, including foundational research on the carbon footprint of dental procedures and a landmark series in the British Dental Journal. Internationally recognised, he has delivered keynote addresses at major conferences and advises professional and academic bodies on integrating sustainability into clinical practice. His work combines life-cycle assessment with systems thinking to drive low-carbon, equitable healthcare transformation.

Alexandra Lyne

Consultant in Paediatric Dentistry
Eastman Dental Hospital, London, UK

Alexandra Lyne is a Consultant in Paediatric Dentistry, Eastman Dental Hospital, London, UK and holds an Honorary Research Associate position with UCL Eastman Dental.

Nina Lundegren

Senior Lecturer
Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden.

Nina Lundegren is a senior lecturer at Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden. With a two-year master's degree in teaching and learning in higher education and an interest in Challenge-Based Learning, she works with educational and curricular development as program director for the dentistry program at Malmö University. She has been implementing learning activities on sustainability in dentistry into the new curricula.

 

Jonathan Dixon

Clinical Academic Fellow in Restorative Dentistry
University of Sheffield, UK

Jonathan is a clinical academic at the School of Clinical Dentistry at the University of Sheffield. In his role as an educator, Jonathan leads the undergraduate clinical skills teaching and is also the sustainability lead for the school. He is an educational researcher and played a central role in publishing numerous outputs from the O-Health-Edu project. Jonathan’s PhD explored how the dental curriculum evolves to incorporate new topics and used environmental sustainability as a case study.

He has co-chaired various special-interests groups at annual ADEE conferences and has collaborated with ADEE and the FDI World Dental Federation to disseminate his work on embedding environmental sustainability in the curriculum. Jonathan is currently completing his specialist clinical training in Periodontics. 

 

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