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SAO 2019 Leadership Project – Blue Team
The “Each One, Reach One” campaign will need to be marketed to our current membership in order to secure current member participation. Several marketing avenues already exist: the AAO website, AAO social media pages, and AAO publications. A general campaign with only the tagline may not resonate with many members and could be easily overlooked, but personal stories will empower members to believe that they can make a difference in the “Each One, Reach One” endeavor. Brittany Reid • Tom Garner • Zac Levin • Billy Neale • Henry Rozen • Sal Zammatti • Beth Faber (EC Liaison) •
INTRODUCTION
As dental professionals, we pledge to uphold high ethical standards to best serve our patients. To maintain a high standard of conduct for the specialty and to promote patient advocacy requires a collaborative effort among members. The American Association of Orthodontists (AAO) is the largest dental specialty organization in the world and, since its inception in 1900, has grown to represent over 18,000 members. 1 The AAO provides several benefits for members of all experience levels. These include continuing education, practice management, legal and advocacy assistance, and career opportunities. 1,2 The mission of the organization is to promote excellent patient care through these programs and research. The AAO’s stated purposes are: 1 Through AAO marketing, stories of existing “Each One, Reach One” relationships in our organization could be highlighted. Articles that describe how members could share stories of how they became involved in organized orthodontics and who encouraged them along the way, accompanied with photographs, could be written and disseminated through the different AAO media avenues. excellence in orthodontic education and practice. to advance the science and art of orthodontics. benefits of orthodontic treatment. that benefit a members’ pursuit of professional success. If membership in organized orthodontics is strong and member efforts are unified, our patients can benefit greatly. Members who enlist in the “Each One, Reach One” campaign should receive an email or packet that describes many of the benefits offered by the AAO of which many orthodontists, both members and nonmembers, are unaware. This packet should also give suggestions of how to mentor others as well as provide new orthodontists’ contact information to state organizations. By taking a one-on-one personal approach, we believe the specialty can be successful in engaging millennial orthodontists in
SAO Blue Team Leadership Project 2019
How the AAO Works for You: Increasing Engagement for Our Future
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4. To promote the highest standards of To encourage and sponsor research
To educate the public about the
To provide advocacy and services
organized orthodontics.
THE PROBLEM
In 2016, Dr Courtney Dunn wrote a guest blog post for Orthopundit in which she presented several concerns with the current structure and leadership of the AAO and its benefits of membership. In her post, she cited several reasons why orthodontists may be failing to join the organization. Dr Dunn stated that the amount of student loan debt and the scarcity of jobs might deter new orthodontists from joining and participating in the organization and that “millennials” are typically more driven to join social media communities over traditional organizations. She also called for a diversification of leadership, new direction for the annual session, and overhaul of the current Consumer Advocacy Program (CAP). 3
Dr Dunn has transitioned from critic to advocate of the AAO and now serves on AAO’s Council on Communications (COC), but some of the same concerns she mentioned are still evident in the orthodontic community among colleagues on social media outlets (Figure 1). 4 Despite the AAO’s efforts to provide resources to orthodontists, we suspect some orthodontists are choosing not to renew their membership and new orthodontists are failing to join the organization. We believe organized orthodontics is essential to preserving the specialty, so choosing not to maintain AAO membership (or failing to join the AAO) is counterproductive to the specialty as a whole. The goals of the current project were to investigate the following questions:
Are orthodontists investing in other meetings outside of the AAO, orthodontists? Do orthodontists understand the value in AAO membership? Does financial obligation have an effect on the decision to join the AAO or renew membership?
OUR PROJECT
For this particular project, we provided a survey to members of the Southern Association of Orthodontists (SAO). A 20-question survey was compiled and emailed to all active SAO members after it was approved by the AAO Survey Review Committee using the most current member directory. Data was collected, analyzed, and compiled by the AAO data analysis team.
RESULTS & CONCLUSIONS
The results provided survey answers from 181 respondents. The data from respondents was further subdivided into three cohorts based on practice experience: 0-10 years in practice, 11-20 years in practice, and 21+ years in practice. and is this a trend with millennial
By nature of the survey distribution, all respondents were members of the AAO.
According to the data, most respondents (52.5%) work 31-40 hours per week. Most are private solo practitioners. The majority of respondents (62.0%) practice in a suburban area. Many (36.3%) respondents have been practicing orthodontics for 30 years or more. A vast majority (97.1%) of respondents have been active members of the AAO for their entire career.
Figure 1: Current “chatter” among orthodontists on social media. OrthoPreneurs (Facebook Private Group) August 26, 2019
Most respondents are members of other organizations, i.e. ADA, Angle Society, etc. Most respondents attend “traditional” organization meetings such as the AAO, SAO, or state association meetings. Based on the results, the earlier an orthodontist is in his/her career, the more likely the person is to simultaneously be a member of several other organizations.
The highest percentage of any cohort attending an “alternative/non-traditional” organization meeting was orthodontists practicing only 0-10 years; 8% have attended the OrthoPreneurs meeting. The OrthoPreneurs meeting was the most commonly attended “alternative/ non-traditional” meeting in all cohorts except for the 21+ cohort. The 21+ cohort most commonly attended the Mindset Knowledge Skill (MKS) meeting.
Most respondents reported that they believe the AAO is successful in achieving its stated purposes and most members are in favor of the AAO expanding its purpose to provide more value for dues. Overwhelmingly, AAO members who responded to this survey think their dues are used wisely. About 80% of respondents believe that the AAO should not reduce its goals or decrease the cost of dues. Only 43% of the respondent orthodontists have ever seen how their dues are spent, but 86% of them would find this information valuable. When asked directly about membership dues, most members favor dues in the $500-1000 range. As expected, members early in their career favor lower dues and members later in their careers are skewed slightly toward higher dues in the $1000-1500 range. Additionally, to have lower dues does not motivate most members (55%) to join/rejoin the AAO.
When provided with a list of comparative options from which to choose, members find Career Services, Practice Resources, and “Find an Orthodontist” as the least valuable benefits of their membership. They believe the biggest waste of members’ AAO dues are the Consumer
