By W. Edward Gonzalez, BS, DMD Orthodontic Smiles is a podcast that is designed for all dentists and their staff that practice orthodontics. The podcasts include interviews by Dr. Ed Gonzalez with practitioners, educators and practice management gurus from all over the world. It is exciting when Orthodontic Smiles get the opportunity to interview international luminaries. These renowned dentists have toiled hard to achieve their fame. As lamplighters of dentistry, they are all so famous that the dental profession relies on their expertise almost daily. The guest interview for this column is Dr. Gordon Christensen. Dr. Christensen is the founder and CEO of Practical Clinical Courses (PCC) and co-founder/CEO for Clinicians Report Foundation as well as a practicing prosthodontist in Provo, Utah. PCC is an international continuing education organization that provides courses and videos for all dental professionals. Clinicians Report offers unbiased research on thousands of dental products. Dr. Christensen has presented over 45,000 hours of continuing education throughout the world and has published many articles and books. Every dentist in the United States knows the name Gordon Christensen. Dr. Ed Gonzalez: Dr. Christensen, there are a lot of people all over the world that listen to the Orthodontic Smiles podcast and read the Journal of the American Orthodontic Society. So, I thought we'd get started by giving them an update on who you are and who you represent and how your organization, CR, got started. It began back in 1976, correct? non-profit organization. We started out as Clinical Research Associates. This group ran 27 years with that orientation. At that time, Dr. Rella Christensen, my wife, was the head person. Then, we were called away by a church mission administering to many young missionaries, and we were gone for a period of years. When we returned, we had to make a decision. Were we going to keep the organization or were we going to dissolve it? We took a year of contemplation and, during that time, we received a large amount of posi-tive feedback and insistence from the profession for us to continue, so we kept going. Now, we evaluate, depending on the year, from 500 to 700 new products, concepts, devices, and techniques. Many of them, about 1 out of 5 meet their claims. That's a pathetic Dr. Gordon Christensen: Yes, thank you. And let's just give everyone a little brief overview of how it all started. I was an academic back then and served in every capacity from instructor to dean. I'd been in academics about 15 years when I saw a dire need for evaluation of products in an unbiased way. Many orga-nizations, in fact, almost all organizations except us, look at products with a financial goal in mind. We are a 18 Winter 2019 JAOS
Journal of the American Orthodontic Society Winter 2019: Page 18
