Iowa at the 2024 National Oral Health Conference

A large contingent of Iowa Dentistry faculty, students, and alumni attended and presented at the National Oral Health Conference April 15-17 in St. Louis, MO. A few highlights include:

• Dr. Steven Levy received the AAPHD Distinguished Service Award.
• Dr. Hayley Harvey ('94 DDS, '96 MS), dental director of Broadlawns Medical Center and extramural adjunct faculty for Iowa Dentistry, finished her term as president of the AAPHD and will assume the role of past president.  The AAPHD is the specialty organization for dental public health and is the sponsoring organization for the dental public health board (the American Board of Dental Public Health). Previous AAPHD presidents from Iowa include Dr. Hermine McLeran, Dr. Rhys Jones, Dr. Michelle McQuistan, and Dr. John Warren. Previous ABDPH presidents from Iowa include Warren and Levy.
• Dr. Julie Reynolds is currently serving a two-year term as secretary of the AAPHD Board of Directors.
• Dr. Jennifer Sukalski was sworn in as Associate Member Liason as part of the AAPHD Board of Directors.
• Dr. Amy Lesch was recognized by the ABDPH for completing the certification process for the ABDPH. Ebuka Ogwo ('21 PhD), assistant professor at Temple University, and Abimbola Oladayo, who successfully defended her dissertation at Iowa earlier this month, also completed the certification process for the ABDPH.
• Dr. Teresa Marshall presented her talk, "Oral and Systemic Health: the role of diet and SSBs" as part of the ABDPH Symposium: The Role of Dental Public Health in Food Policy. 
• Dr. Julie Reynolds presented an AAPHD-sponsored workshop presentation on Antiracism Teaching in Dental Predoctoral and Dental Public Health Curricula.
• In addition to Marshall and Reynolds, faculty members McQuistan and Dr. Mary Tandon gave poster presentations at the conference. 
• Dr. Gurjot Bhatia, former resident in dental public health, received first place for the Leverett Graduate Student Merit Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dental Public Health. This is the third year in a row that someone with an Iowa pedigree has received the award. The Leverett award is a competition among graduate students and residents from programs around the country. Winners are selected on the basis of originality and design of the project, description of results and conclusions, quality of the results from the project, scientific value of the project, dental public health value of the project, quality of the project presentation, and demonstrated mastery of the subject. Dr. Mary Tandon also received an honorable mention for her project presentation.
• In addition to Bhatia's and Tandon's presentations, other student and resident poster presenters included:
  • McAllister Castelaz, dental public health resident
  • Casey Delaney, dental student
  • Alex Harper, dental student
  • Shannon Havel, dental student
  • Pamela Nwachukwu, dental public health resident
  • William Senn, dental public health resident
• Several other dental students from the Dental Public Health Student Club attended the conference, and the group of dental students participated in the AAPHD Student Chapter Luncheon.