Community Engagement and Oral Health Disparities Research

The speaker is Professor and Chair, Department of Health Policy and Health Services Research at Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine. He is also the Director of the Northeast Center for Research to Evaluate and Eliminate Dental Disparities, established at BU in 2001 and supported by the National Institutes of Health. The Center's aims are to identify the determinants of oral health disparities and to design and implement community-based interventions to eliminate oral health disparities, with a current focus on children and their caregivers. In addition, he has investigated the role that oral conditions may play as risk factors for cardiovascular disease and other systemic health outcomes, and how oral conditions may affect health-related quality of life. In the area of health policy, his department at Boston University has implemented new programs to enhance access to oral health care by under-served populations and to recruit students from under-represented groups to enter the oral health professions. Dr. Garcia is a 1981 graduate of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, where he received the DMD degree summa cum laude. He completed his specialty training in Periodontology in 1984, and went on to receive a Master of Medical Sciences degree from Harvard in 1985.