The Timothy A. DeRouen Center for Global Oral Health is one of five recipients of the UW Population Health Initiative Grant, which is awarded to pilot research projects to advance the health, community strength, and future development of populations. The DeRouen Center will collaborate with the UW schools and departments of landscape architecture, nursing, engineering, epidemiology, and global health to develop InterACTION Labs, an interdisciplinary built environment-community health program that will work with residents of the Claverito community in Iquitos, one of Peru’s five largest cities.
The Amazon River community of Claverito models an area where the environment and health conditions are interlinked. Our role in this project will be to study the microbiomes of children and adults in the region. Dr. Ana Lucia Seminario and UW dental student Belle Chen will travel there in 2018 to collect saliva samples for analysis by Drs. Georgios Kotsakis and Jeff McLean and gather information about how oral health affects Claverito residents’ quality of life. From this research, we hope to develop interventions that will improve the community’s oral health.
Our UW partners include:
- Sarah Gimbel, BSN, PhD, MPH-Family and Child Nursing
- Rebecca Newmann, PhD-Civil and Environmental Engineering
- Peter Rabinowitz, MD, MPH-Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences
- Ben Spencer, MArch, MLA-Landscape Architecture
