UCC professor wins two top international dental research awards
UCC’s head of the College of Medicine and Health, Professor Helen Whelton, is the 2019 recipient of the Distinguished Scientist H. Trendley Dean Memorial Award.
The awards were conferred at joint annual meetings of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR), the American Association for Dental Research (AADR) and the Canadian Association for Dental Research (CADR), hosted in Vancouver, Canada.
Professor Whelton is also the chief academic officer for the South Southwest Hospital Group. Her research focus has been on fluoride and health services.
She has led oral health surveys in Ireland and helped develop agendas for dental research in developing and developed countries to monitor oral health among their populations. She leads several interdisciplinary research projects examining large oral health services databases.
Whelton’s research has informed the development of dental services and she has also expanded her research contribution to the areas of obesity and women’s general health issues.
She has published and lectured extensively in dental public health, preventive dentistry and health services research and is currently the coordinating Principal Investigator of a €6m European Union Horizon 2020 grant on using administrative patient data to help shift services from the production of treatment to the production of health through an increased emphasis on prevention.
The work incorporates individual and system-wide feedback on indicators of success in promoting oral health.
