When Howard Cowen (’76 DDS, ’95 MS) joined the University of Iowa College of Dentistry faculty in 1982, he served as the Director of the Geriatric Mobile Dental Unit, which provided care to elderly patients across the state starting in 1979. Throughout his career, Cowen has focused on making sure that underserved populations receive the highest quality dental care, and has helped to shape the educational offerings to dental students in the field of underserved populations.

We were saddened learn of the death of one of our program alumni, Dr. Rahul Nair (MS, 2008) who died in an automobile accident on November 4, 2022. 

The term “seven-year itch” is a belief that after a certain amount of time – usually about 7 years – there is a psychological need to change or do something new.  After nearly seven years of not producing a Dental Public Health Alumni Newsletter, there is now a definite ‘itch’ to once again send out an annual newsletter.  So, for the first time since 2015, we have a DPH Alumni Newsletter for your reading enjoyment. 

We haven’t been keeping track of everyone, but we do know there whereabouts of many of our graduates.  Some of them are listed below.  If you have updates, please feel to share them with us, and we will include them in the next newsletter.

Several DPH program graduates have recently become certified as Diplomates of the American Board of Dental Public Health (ABDPH). 

In 2022, there are several students are graduating from our programs. Currently, there are three PhD students and two MS students. We welcomed two new students to our Dental Public Health-Pediatric Dentistry program and three new MS students.

In recent years, our faculty have received many awards and recognitions, or have served as national leaders in various organizations.

New faculty in the department include a DPH program alumnus, two new clinical faculty, and other new department faculty. In the time since our last newsletter, one of the past directors of the DPH program, passed away. Two other former leaders in our department retired, and Dr. Leo Marchini recently left the department to take the position of Department Head in Cleveland. Departure and arrival of Dr. Michelle McQuistan left us in 2019. After about a year, she decided that Iowa was a better ‘fit’ for her and her family and returned.

The Midwest Regional Dental Public Health conference brings together dental public health professionals and students from Iowa and several nearby states. The conference has been held nearly every year since the 1990s through 2019, but the COVID-19 pandemic caused us to cancel the event in 2020, 2021 and for 2022. 

After 31+ years, over 200 publications, and the involvement of countless faculty, staff and students, formal funding for the Iowa Fluoride Study (IFS) will end in Summer of 2023.  Originally funded on September 1, 1991, as a 5-year NIH grant with a total budget of $1.3 million, the study recruited nearly 1,900 participants in Iowa hospital post-partum units from 1992-1995, and then, remarkably, followed this cohort for nearly a quarter-century, with formal subject contact ending in 2019.  During that time, the IFS and the companion Iowa Bone Development Study (IBDS) were awarded about $30 million.