Advocating for oral and craniofacial research in the global health arena demands that oral health researchers be active leaders by seeking and promoting collaboration among existing worldwide projects to improve both oral health and overall health. The mission of the Timothy A. DeRouen Center for Global Oral Health (https://research.dental.uw.edu/derouencenter/ ) is to improve quality of life by promoting collaboration and inclusivity in oral and craniofacial research that impacts global health. Through this first annual DeRouen Center symposium, we aim to provide the appropriate setting to increase collaboration among oral researchers and expand our network beyond oral health. We will partner with our current collaborators in global health, medicine, epidemiology, nursing, behavioral sciences, immunology and biostatistics to showcase successful strategies for integrating oral and craniofacial research. The theme of this symposium is ?Inter-professional healthcare: adding oral health to interdisciplinary global health projects worldwide?. All five speakers are collaborators with the University of Washington oral health researchers supported by NIH grants. They will present their experiences and describe successful and unsuccessful strategies that have impacted the development of their programs. Specifically, topics are: for Thailand, Faculty Development; for Kenya, HIV research on children and adolescents; for Peru, Connecting the Peruvian oral research community to NIH; for USA, Opportunities through NIH Fogarty Fellows and Scholars and from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Relevance of oral health for global health. Of relevance to the DeRouen Center, this symposium targets the general scientific community, especially junior investigators in order to create a pipeline for future global oral health researchers. We will provide a lunch & learn session that will generate discussions of current projects as well as a setting for poster presentations. This opportunity will allow pre- and postdoc students to explain their global health work and to find common ground with peer participants, faculty and researchers attending the symposium.
Our specific aims are to: a. Propose strategies to integrate oral and craniofacial research in interdisciplinary collaborations by showcasing past and current worldwide research projects. b. Generate new strategies for collaboration in global oral health by targeting participation of colleagues beyond dentistry. c. Enhance our existing collaborations by creating a 5-year plan for our current lines of research in Thailand, Kenya, Peru and Seattle. d. Create a pipeline of future leaders in global oral health research by i) exposing current dental pre-, post- doc students and fellows to global health, and ii) exposing current general pre-, post-doc students and fellows to oral and craniofacial research.
Our application aims to provide the appropriate setting to increase collaboration among oral researchers and expand our network beyond oral health. The newly University of Washington Timothy A. DeRouen Center for Global Oral Health aims to improve quality of life by promoting collaboration and inclusivity in oral and craniofacial research that impacts global health. Through this first annual symposium, we aim to propose strategies to integrate the oral health component within existing global health research projects worldwide.
