March 08, 2011
Dr. Heather Beil

Dr. Heather Beil
Dr. Kim Hammersmith

Dr. Kim Hammersmith

Heather Beil, PhD, and Kim Hammersmith, DDS, MPH, alumnae of the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management, have been selected to receive the American Association of Public Health Dentistry’s Leverett Graduate Student Merit Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dental Public Health.

 
First-place winner Beil, now a postdoctoral student at the UNC School of Nursing, completed her dissertation at UNC in December 2010. Third-place awardee Hammersmith, a second-year resident in pediatric dentistry at Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, received her Master of Public Health in health policy and management at UNC in 2009.
 
Beil and Hammersmith will receive cash prizes and travel costs to attend the National Oral Health Conference, where they will accept their awards at a special presentation in Pittsburgh on Monday, April 11.
 
“It took two-and-a-half years to complete the dissertation research from developing the idea in the proposal to carrying out the work,” Beil said. “Throughout the process, the research was a collaborative effort with members of my committee, particularly my dissertation chair, Dr. Gary Rozier. The award is a reflection of the caliber of mentorship and help I received from Gary and other committee members, including health policy and management faculty members Drs. Sally Stearns, Jessica Lee, Kristen Lich and Dr. John Preisser, a UNC biostatistics faculty member.”
 
Beil will present her poster “Effects of Early Preventive Dental Care on Dental Outcomes Among Medicaid Enrolled Children,” during the conference.”I am pleased that Heather’s dissertation research will be recognized at the National Oral Health Conference,” said Rozier, professor of health policy and management in UNC’s Gillings School of Global Public Health. “Her study provides valuable information for the development of guidelines for the age at which children should have their first dental visit. Early dental visits, in turn, can help reduce dental disease, the most common health problem facing children in North Carolina. The award also acknowledges the strong Medicaid and dental public health programs that we have in North Carolina, particularly their innovative information and surveillance systems, which made the study possible.”
Hammersmith will present her Ohio State University thesis project, titled “Ohio Dentists’ Awareness and Adoption of the Dental Home Concept,” at the conference. She credits Rozier and Jessica Lee, PhD, associate professor of health policy and management in the public health school and pediatric dentistry in the School of Dentistry, with providing important insights as she began her project.
 
“I am thrilled that Kim has received this award,” Lee said. “I served as Kim’s research adviser and mentor for a previous research project and always found her actively engaged in research from inception to study design, data collection, analysis and publication. Kim has always wanted to work on policy research that would help disadvantaged children. Her current project is doing just that and should have an impact on the establishment of dental home for children.”
“My education and experience as a student in health policy and management at UNC instilled in me the interest in and abilities for improving oral health at the policy level,” Hammersmith said, “and this project has allowed me to think critically about current policies and their translation into practice.”
 

The National Oral Health Conference will be the 12th joint meeting between the Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors and the American Association of Public Health Dentistry. More than 700 participants and 30 exhibitors are expected over the five days of programming.

 
 
 

UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health contact: Ramona DuBose, director of communications, (919) 966-7467 or ramona_dubose@unc.edu.

 

 

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