Mabuhay from Manila! When I decided to pursue a PhD in Oral Sciences at the Khon Kaen University (KKU) in Thailand, this led me to understand and appreciate research in a different light. Realizing that there is a paucity of research in my home country, my goal then was to base my dissertation on a study conducted in the Philippines. My interest was in child development and pediatric dentistry with the aim of generating relevant information on Filipino children. Research by itself is considered a very challenging process, but contributing to the difficulty of my study was the data collection being disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. In the Philippines, strict community lockdowns were imposed starting March 2020 and was lifted in March 2022. Completion of my community-based data collection became significantly delayed and needed to be carefully continued amidst the pandemic lockdowns. Through the assistance of my KKU mentors and my incredible research team, we were able to produce some recent publications on early childhood caries in Filipino toddlers.
Various research workshops funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) together with the KKU Faculty of Dentistry and the University of Washington School of Dentistry and Seattle Children’s Hospital helped enrich my research background. These experiences allowed collaborations and networking with different people in local and global settings hopefully leading to more important opportunities that will promote and support further research in my country.
MARITESS OLIVEROS-VILLARICO, DDM, MFLCD, PhD
Assistant Professor, Pediatric Dentistry
College of Dentistry
University of the Philippines