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The Department of Community Dentistry has several
programs which involve health services, education and research
and are a resource for graduate students studying dental care
systems. These programs have as their goal the protection and
improvement of the oral health of individual patients and of
the community at large. Faculty members of the department have
research programs of their own and teach and serve on committees
of graduate students from various departments of the University
(Community Health Nursing, Epidemiology, Nutrition).
 The
Department has organized a research network of 255 general dentists
in northern Ohio as a laboratory for health services research
in dentistry. This network includes 45 African-American dentists,
gender distribution that slightly oversamples female dentists,
urban, suburban, and rural dentists and an age distribution
similar to that described in national samples. Dentists drawn
from the network have participated in two pilot direct observation
studies, two studies of attitudes towards tobacco cessation
programs in dental practice, and a study of computer usage in
dental practice. A 4 year NIH grant supports a major direct
observation study of prevention in dental practice that will
involve 120 network practices and over 6000 patient visits.
The principle investigator for this $2.3 million grant is Stephen
Wotman DDS.
The Department of Community Dentistry also has underway an
ongoing program involving all four years of dental students
in the placement of dental sealants on all 2nd and 6th graders
permanent molar teeth who attend the City of Cleveland Public
Schools. This program involves referrals to dentists for additional
care, education of teachers , public school students, parents,
and dental students. The program is supported ($600,000 annually)
by the St. Luke's Foundation of Cleveland , and the educational
component is supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
($500,000 over four years) and the Cleveland Foundation. During
the 2004-2005 school year, the Sealant Program visited 93 schools
and treated over 5,000 children with 13,000 sealants.
The School of Dental Medicine also provides a wide ranging clinical
service program housed within the School. (It maintains its
own "dental hospital"). This program provides service to 55,000
patients a year and includes all of the dental specialties.
It provides a laboratory for study of all of the management
issues that typify an ambulatory setting.
The faculty of the Department of Community Dentistry includes:
James Lalumandier DDS, MPH, associate professor and chair (dental
sealant program, research network), Stephen Wotman DDS, professor
(direct observation study, distribution of African American
and Hispanic dentists), Suchitra Nelson PhD,(Epidemiology) assistant
professor, (health services researcher), Kristin Victoroff DDS,(PhD
candidate in Organizational Behavior) Assistant Professor (attitudes
of dental practitioners), Kristin Williams DDS, senior instructor
(dental sealant program, direct observation study), James Houston DDS, senior instructor (dental sealant program), Catherine
Demko PhD, Assistant Professor (Epidedmiologist- direct observation
study, Ohio supported study of smokeless tobacco), and Joseph Sudano
PhD, (Medicine)(Health Sociology) coinvestigator on direct observation
grant.
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