The numbers have been bothering Edna Abreu for a while. Between 60% and 70% of dental practices employ between one and five Latina team members. Only 3% of Latinas working in dentistry hold leadership positions.
In this episode of The DrBicuspid.com Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Kevin Henry sits down with Abreu -- a dental consultant, entrepreneur, and founder of Latinas in Dentistry -- to discuss why that gap exists, what it costs practices if they ignore it, and what needs to change.
Abreu traces the disparity's origin to a cultural convention before it is ever professional. Latinas, she says, tend by upbringing to be the working bees -- in their households, families, and then, predictably, in their dental offices. They work hard, they stay quiet, and hope someone notices. The problem is that hope is not a career development strategy. Without a pathway or the confidence to initiate a conversation, the climb into leadership simply does not happen for most.
What practice owners may not realize is how much that dynamic is costing them. Bilingual team members are not just a convenience -- in practices serving Spanish-speaking populations, they are a direct driver of patient trust, treatment acceptance, and retention. Abreu is direct about the legal dimension as well: Consent forms and treatment plans must be understood by the patient in their native language. Practices that hand a Spanish-speaking patient an English-only consent form and collect a signature are exposed, and the courts have seen it play out exactly that way.
Her advice to practice owners is straightforward: Know your demographic. If a meaningful portion of your patient base is Spanish-speaking, bilingual should appear explicitly in your job postings.
Beyond hiring, Abreu asks owners to look at what is already in front of them: the dental assistant who has managed the scheduling system for years without a title change, the team member quietly doing the work of a clinical lead without the recognition or the pay that should come with it. That audit, she argues, is overdue in most practices.
Abreu founded Latinas in Dentistry as a community for any Latina working anywhere in the dental space -- clinicians, office managers, lab techs, vendors, speakers, and entrepreneurs. She is also sponsoring a speaking clinic at Murado's ASC conference in Arizona in October, led by Claudia Lovato, with the explicit goal of getting more Latina voices onto dental conference stages.
Find Edna Abreu on Facebook, or search Latinas in Dentistry to join the group directly. She is also at @latinasindentistry and @thedentalculturist on Instagram.
Listen to the full conversation in the player below.
