Keynote Speaker

About the Research Day 2024 keynote speaker

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Jane A. Weintraub, DDS, MPH

Dr. Jane A. Weintraub recently served as the 51st President of the American Association of Dental, Oral and Craniofacial Research (AADOCR). She is the first R. Gary Rozier and Chester W. Douglass Distinguished Professor in Dental Public Health, former Dean at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Adams School of Dentistry, and adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. 

Dr. Weintraub is a diplomate of the American Board of Dental Public Health and past president of the American Association of Public Health Dentistry.  Her epidemiology and health disparities research cuts across the lifespan with a focus on prevention and relationships among oral health, healthcare, and systemic disease.

She has received the International Association for Dental Research H. Trendley Dean Memorial Award for meritorious research in epidemiology and public health, the American Dental Association’s Norton Ross Award for Clinical Research, the John W. Knutson Award from the American Public Health Association’s Oral Health Section and many others.

Dr. Weintraub earned her DDS at Stony Brook University and her MPH and public health training at Harvard University. She was inducted as a Fellow of both the American and International College of Dentistry and was in the first class of AADOCR Fellows. Earlier in her career, she practiced dentistry in Boston, MA.

The keynote address is titled “The Hunt to Understand and Prevent Oral Disease: Clinical trials, tribulations and other research adventures.” In this presentation, Dr. Weintraub will share some highlights of her professional journey and adventures across the country, starting as a pre-dental student just beginning her research career. She has focused on conducting oral epidemiology and clinical research with implications for preventing oral disease and improving access to dental care. Her clinical trial experiences include dental sealants (a long-term follow-up study of one of the first clinical trials), plantibody to prevent dental caries (the first US clinical trial), and fluoride varnish (the first US study in pre-school children to test its efficacy to prevent early childhood caries). She will describe a process followed after obtaining favorable clinical trial evidence to promoting changes in health policies and dental practice. Her research has focused on both ends of the age spectrum, with recent studies focused on the oral health and access to care for older adults.

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