My Candidacy
Committed to serve AAOMS & its members.
CANDIDACY
“As a result of my twenty-plus years of leadership experience and involvement at these levels, I have been afforded a degree of institutional memory that gives me a depth of knowledge, important to perform at the executive level.“
Statement of Candidacy:
We all are extremely privileged to be Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons and have the opportunity to serve our patients with a unique form of specialized care, while simultaneously providing a good life for our families. As an oral and maxillofacial surgeon serving my patients with an expanded scope of our specialty for almost four decades, I have enjoyed this privilege throughout my career.
I understand private practice intimately – the financial pressures, staffing challenges, referral relationships, regulatory burdens, the daily clinical risks, and the train of decisions. Most importantly though, I appreciate the rewards of caring for and developing long-term relationships with my patients and their families, and the pride of building something on your own – with the assistance a fantastic staff that are still to this day, my adopted family. That experience connects me closely with the majority of our AAOMS members, who live these everyday realities of private practice.
Thirty Years of Leadership Experience:
I have been involved in organized dentistry for over thirty years. My decision to run for AAOMS Vice-President though, is not simply “the next step” in some leadership ladder. I have never viewed leadership as a series of levels or titles to be collected.
When I accepted my first OMS leadership role, I simply felt a responsibility to give back to the specialty that had given me a career and a professional identity. That seed was planted by Dr. R.V. Walker during my residency at Parkland but was later nurtured by working with many passionate and talented leaders over the years.
I have been fortunate to have many doors opened for me in organized dentistry & oral and maxillofacial surgery, and I have tried – occasionally with some reluctance – but always with commitment, to walk through them and do my best. I see this next opportunity to serve, as one more of those open doors.
My first “leadership door” in OMS was opened by briefly serving on the Board of the Southern California Association of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons, but when the Northern and Southern California Associations of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons merged and became the California Association of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons, I was elected as a director to the CALAOMS Board. Five years later, I found myself President of the largest OMS component association in the country.
Thanks to now, AAOMS past president, Dr. Larry Moore and others, additional doors were opened for me at the national level, allowing me over the last 20 years, to have serve on multiple AAOMS committees and subcommittees. I served on the AAOMS Commission on Professional Conduct (CPC), finalizing my six-year tenure there, as Chair. I also served four rewarding years on the OMS Foundation Board and nine years on OMSPAC (Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery Political Action Committee), culminating my service as the OMSPAC Chair and Immediate Past Chair.
I have served as a Board Liaison for over a dozen AAOMS committees in the last six years, developing an appreciation of the mechanics of each of these committees. Finally, I have served in the AAOMS House of Delegates, as a delegate and now as a Trustee, for twenty years. Most recently, at the 2025 House of Delegates, my caucus nominated me and the House elected me to my third, two‑year term as the AAOMS, District VI Trustee, where I am now serving my final year.
In addition to my service with AAOMS, I also served on the ABOMS Examination Committee. As a result, I was given the opportunity to work alongside an extraordinary group of surgeons and educators for seven rewarding years. In the process, I learned a tremendous amount, built lifelong friendships, and formed an even deeper appreciation for the standards and depth of our specialty.
As a result of my twenty-plus years of leadership experience and involvement at these levels, I have been afforded a degree of institutional memory that gives me a depth of knowledge, important to perform at the executive level.
My Early Background, Education, and Career:
Now traditionally, at this point – you might expect me to list all my ideas, goals, and objectives as Vice President for AAOMS, but – given that I am running for such an important executive position and asking for your support, I think it is important that you first know me personally and I show you why, I feel prepared for such an executive role. The issues, which we have all heard before, will always be there – but a leader’s background, character, experience, and judgement, is perhaps the most important consideration, when choosing an individual who will best face them.
Many of you don’t know, but I was born in Southern Idaho and raised on a farm there. Those of you who grew up on a farm or ranch, understand what that means. From a very young age, you are given responsibilities far earlier than your “city peers”. Many of the duties and expectations I was given, just prior and soon after I entered grade school, would probably have me put in child protective services nowadays …
But, growing up in that environment, forced me to mature quickly; to develop a strong work ethic, learn to trust and rely on yourself and to adapt rapidly in an unpredictable and frequently dangerous setting, and to understand—at a young age—that “actions have consequences”. It gave me an early perspective on risk, responsibility, resilience, and problem solving, which subsequently, began to mold my approach to life. It also taught me not to pee on electric fences …
Now, my childhood and adolescence weren’t just about farming. Growing up in Idaho, also meant easy access to the area mountains and winter snow. I started skiing relatively late at age nine and began racing competitively at age twelve. Alpine ski racing soon became “The” defining feature of my life – right through my sophomore year of college.
Those of you who have competed in athletics at a high level, understand that this degree of involvement requires significant sacrifice and discipline to achieve your goals. For me, the goal of course, was chasing a slot on the US national team. It meant constant travel, missing school and making it up later, training in every kind of weather, day and night, rehabbing injuries and frequently skiing with them, and giving up many of the normal social experiences and events of adolescence.
This was a year-round commitment. From many North American ski resorts in the winter, to the higher snow fields and glaciers of the Pacific Northwest and Canada and the Andes in South America during the summer, I was typically on snow competing or training, for up to 10 months of the year. It was very demanding, but it was also very rewarding and provided a great primer for life.
Ski racing, like any sport, also teaches you about another important part of life – failure. What you do next is most important. The resilience that developed – failing, regrouping, reevaluating and pressing on, is something that was engrained in me because of this sport and has been with me ever since. It also taught me that “Limits are Simply, a Mindset”.
In many ways, sports are a mirror to life. In past conversations with Dr. R. V. Walker, he related this to me. As a minor league baseball player himself, he told me that he frequently favored successful athletes for residency positions – because they knew the value of hard work and understood the pain, the suffering, and the commitment required to reach a goal. As a result, they made good surgeons – and good leaders.
Now, despite my relative success in the sport, achieving many of my goals, and competing at an international level, I eventually had to face reality – my chances of ultimately achieving that “elite level” was shrinking, largely due to my age and a relatively late start in the sport. At the same time, my window for obtaining an education, making a living, and having a lifetime career, was also starting to close. So, I made the difficult decision to step away from that very important part of my younger life, to pursue a more stable and perhaps more productive path – an education and hopefully, a rewarding professional career.
Living in Seattle at the time, I attended the University of Washington, where I earned my undergraduate and dental degrees. I then went straight into a one-year Anesthesia internship and my OMS residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center and Parkland Memorial Hospital, in Dallas, Texas.
After residency, I initially developed a practice in Dallas, with a satellite office in near-by Corsicana, Texas, but with a desire to move to the west coast, relocated four years later and started over – building a new practice from scratch in the Pasadena area of Southern California. Over time and with the invaluable help of my wife Sonya – who was a Parkland OR nurse by training – we established four separate successful offices and a Medicare‑certified ambulatory surgery center, serving the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valley communities’.
I have been very fortunate to have had a long and rewarding professional career – but all things must evolve. I am now retired from clinical practice, but this gives me something incredibly important in the pursuit of this executive role. I now have ample time to devote my full energy, focus, and experience, to the enormous responsibility of representing AAOMS and its members.
So What?
Well, after reflecting on all of this – from my upbringing on a farm – to my years of competitive skiing, to my surgical training, followed by thirty-eight years of private practice, and my thirty years of leadership participation, I realized that all these experiences gave me a number of things that prepare me for this specific executive role:
- An appreciation and understanding of the issues important to the majority of our AAOMS members, as private practitioners.
- An understanding and acceptance of the day‑to‑day realities and needs of all our AAOMS members.
- The ability to remain resilient and adaptive in the face of unexpected challenges to our specialty – and – never quit; Remembering that tomorrow is always another day and “limits are simply a mindset”.
- Institutional memory of the Association’s past dealings, which will aid in making good future decisions.
- The understanding, that I don’t know everything and – as a result – surround myself with gifted people and a competent team, that know more than I do, to best achieve our goals.
- The character to always think in terms of long‑term goals – not just short‑term fixes, and the understanding that – What happens during my tenure has consequences and the outcomes will last forever!
The Landscape ahead for AAOMS:
We, as AAOMS leadership, will always continue to support advocacy at both the state and federal levels, promote OMS state board representation, support our OMS faculty and promote their development, advance our resident’s and member’s education, support OMS research and new technologies through our Foundation, and advocate for the general well-being and success of our members and our specialty, all for the benefit of our patients.
Now, for me to say that I currently have a “detailed agenda” for AAOMS would, in my opinion, be premature for the role of Vice President. Setting such an agenda is fundamentally the role of the President, with the input of the Board of Trustees’ and our Senior Management Team, and it will typically and appropriately be shaped by the issues of the day. As an AAOMS Vice President, my primary responsibility is to support the President and President-Elect, help advance their goals, and absorb as much as possible from them over the coming two years, so I am fully prepared to potentially advance through, to the Presidency.
That said though, I would like to share with you how I see our landscape ahead, and a few issues I feel important to the health and future of our specialty and to AAOMS.
First and foremost – The preservation of our OMS Anesthesia Team Model;
As our 2026 AAOMS President, Dr. Robert Clark has repeatedly emphasized – our list of priorities begins and ends with protecting our OMS Anesthesia Team Model. Continuing to stress to our members and their support teams, the importance of high-quality continuing education and hands-on preparation through simulation training and other anesthesia course offerings, is critical for us to maintain this privilege and illustrate the safety of our OMS Anesthesia Team Model to all who ask – and above all, reinforce our mission of overall patient safety.
Our OMS Anesthesia Team Model is foundational to our specialty, how we practice, and how we serve our patients safely and provide them access to timely care, and – I am committed to defending and preserving our OMS anesthesia team model vigorously.
That said, I can bore you with the traditional election talking points, that we have all heard before, but I believe there are two issues we must seriously recognize and confront, that in many ways, impacts all those other issues.
Attracting the Next Generation to our Specialty as a Career;
We are seeing concerning trends in attracting the younger generations to Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery as a career. One alarming warning sign is the increasing number of unfilled OMS residency positions in the match, especially when compared to higher match results for other dental specialties.
- In 2024, there were 25 unfilled OMS positions.
- In 2025, there were 21 unfilled OMS positions.
- In 2026, there were 17 unfilled OMS positions.
… with most of these openings, in dual-degree training programs.
We cannot explore every possible cause of this trend here, but we must admit to it and proactively
address it with specific and targeted actions. We can acknowledge that the professional and personal
lifestyle goals of our younger potential colleagues differ from those of many of our mature surgeon’s – and that these differing lifestyle goals, probably contribute to these outcomes.
Our efforts to promote a career in OMS needs to become more efficient, intentional, and consistent. Outreach can, and should, begin as early as the high school level and continue through to college and
dental school. We must aggressively compete with the other career options and dental specialties before and especially during dental school training and show students the benefits and advantages of our specialty as a career, not only professionally, but also in the positive life-style aspects.
We must also give dental students a positive impression of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeons – our training, our skills, our scope of practice, and our approachability, so that upon graduation they see us as important team members in the success of their practices, as opposed to competitors or “those more special than thou”. Remember, these individuals will become potential referral sources, State Board members, and / or ADA delegates – potentially, having influence over how we practice.
OMS dental school faculty should play and important role in promoting our specialty and targeting promising candidates in dental school, leading them into our specialty. A strong and consistent mentorship program, whether AAOMS based or grass roots based, is an important component of this effort. Our private practice OMS’ also have an important role in this – promoting our profession to their younger patients and the community.
Finally, ROAAOMS also plays a very important role in providing a welcoming insight into life as a resident – encouraging and promoting our specialty at their more, relatable level. The AAOMS can and must continue to play and important role in supporting both dental school OMS faculty, our community private practitioners, and ROAAOMS committee members in all these activities.
Addressing this issue consistently and proactively, is critical to preserving the health and legacy of our specialty. We can’t afford to ignore this seemingly growing problem or assume it will be self-correcting.
The Changing Perceived Value of Healthcare Association Membership;
The perceived value of, and passion for, membership in healthcare associations is changing. We have seen this within the AMA, where membership has declined from about seventy-five percent of all licensed physicians in the1950’s, to roughly fifteen to twenty percent today.
The ADA has fared better, with recent figures suggesting around sixty percent of licensed U.S. dentists being members, but even there, this is pitiful, and many believe the effective full-dues paying engagement level is significantly lower – and declining.
The AAOMS performs much better, capturing about ninety percent of all OMS’s – but we do increasingly compete with other OMS offerings and the overall trend across healthcare is clear – nearly every major member-oriented healthcare association is experiencing increasing challenges in recruitment, retention, and participation in educational programs and other offerings.
Our membership demographics are shifting. Younger surgeons are entering practice with different expectations about work‑life balance, much higher levels of educational debt, different practice model opportunities, and perhaps, a different relationship to the idea of “a profession.” The desire for in‑person camaraderie and traditional meeting formats has weakened for many. The appreciation for organized advocacy – something many of us grew up valuing – is also waning.
These changes are directly affecting the ability and the willingness of many potential members to participate in the same ways, and to the same extent, as earlier generations. As a membership‑driven organization, we cannot simply wish these changes away. We must not be complacent – we must adapt.
If we want to re-shape this culture of professional engagement, it must start in residency. Program directors, faculty, and ROAAOMS play a central role in educating our next generation – that being a professional means more than just delivering good clinical care and having a title. It means face-to-face participation in organized dentistry, engaging in leadership, and supporting strong political advocacy, education and research – all to the benefit of our specialty. These points must be instilled in residents by their faculty mentors in their formative stage and we must engage, educate, encourage, and support our educators in this effort. This is where it all begins, and possibly ends.
Taking Care of Our Current Members
At the same time, we cannot ignore our current AAOMS members. We must recognize and respond to their specific wants and needs across all demographics. Ultimately, that means, if we are to serve our members, wherever they are in their practice life, and get ahead of these trends, we must:
- Listen carefully to what our members value – and what they don’t – and make good decisions based upon these values.
- Demonstrate tangible, real‑world value and respect for our member’s hard-earned dues.
- Offer flexible, high‑quality educational opportunities that fit modern professional and family life and promote their participation in our offerings.
- Create clear, accessible and rewarding pathways into leadership and faculty careers.
- Strongly message the importance of service to the specialty and as such, the personal rewards that are gained by the individual member.
- Engrain in our membership – the critical importance of strong, well‑funded advocacy and research, to the continued strength and advancement of our specialty and the individual practice.
- Promote to our membership and provide offerings to support their personal health and wellbeing, and practice longevity.
and finally … - Recognize, develop, utilize, and regulate, when necessary, novel practice models and new technologies, including AI, to help manage our Association’s goals and our members success.
These are not new issues, and I do not mean to imply that our Association is blind to them. We have discussed many of these issues at the Board level, but I want to assure you, if I am put in a position to affect them – they will not be ignored – because, if we become complacent to our possible future and fail to grow or at least sustain our membership, which is our Association’s foundation – we will not have the political strength, financial stability, or human capital to defend our OMS Anesthesia Team Model, our scope of practice, our patients’ access to care, or any future challenges that will present. Ignoring these issues, as some other associations have, can only lead us on a path toward irrelevance. I will not accept that future for the AAOMS.
By doing those things – by promoting our specialty at early educational levels and attracting dental students to a career in OMS, by supporting resident training and participation in leadership, by creating and supporting various faculty tracts in the specialty, and addressing membership engagement, recognizing various practice models, and promoting practice sustainability, alongside advocacy, education, and research, – we can continue to:
- Preserve and advance our specialty and its overall relevance to healthcare,
- Support our members at every stage of their careers,
- Maintain and strengthen the unity of our specialty across all degrees, practice pathways, practice
models, and scopes of practice,
and …
- Keep AAOMS at the forefront – as the leading voice for Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons and the
patients we serve.
In Closing:
I’ll return to where I began – yet, another opportunity door has been opened for me, and – I am choosing to walk through it.
My current vision as a prospective executive officer is straightforward. Simply, represent AAOMS and our members to the best of my ability and – leave AAOMS better than when I started my journey.
To maintain – and, where possible, elevate – AAOMS’s position as the trusted, authoritative voice for our specialty, and to anticipate and address the challenges ahead, so we can continue to protect and strengthen our specialty for our next generation’s and reignite the passion that brought each of us to it.
As such, I respectfully ask you to support my election this year for AAOMS Vice President – and, in the years ahead, I ask for your trust, for your confidence, and for your input as to how together, we can make our association and specialty better – as I continue to grow as an executive leader and humble representative of this great Association.
W. Frederick Stephens, DDS
AAOMS Vice Presidential Candidate
W. Frederick Stephens, DDS
FOR VICE-PRESIDENT