A DeRouen Center collaborator, Dr. Yan Wang, is taking part in the Center’s Children’s Healthy Oral Management Project (CHOMP) grant in Kenya. Dr. Wang is studying the oral microbiome of Kenyan children and adolescents who are living with HIV and taking antiretroviral therapy (ART). The collected samples were sent to Dr. Aldrovandi’s Microbiology Lab at University of California Los Angeles for analysis. The aims of the CHOMP study are to measure the association between oral and systemic inflammation in the Kenya Pediatric Studies (KPS) cohort, and to assess the impact of oral diseases and inflammation on children’s quality of life. The secondary aim is to assess acceptability and feasibility of integrating routine oral health care in the setting of routine Pediatric HIV care.
Dr. Wang is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Public and Population Health department at the UCLA School of Dentistry. She received her PhD in Biostatistics at Fielding School of Public Health, UCLA, and subsequently completed both a one-year NIH T37 postdoc and a two-year T32 postdoc.
The CHOMP study has furthered the study of HIV in children and adolescents, and has yielded two published manuscripts – “Oral Diseases and Oral Health–Related Quality of Life among Kenyan
Children and Adolescents with HIV”, and “The effect of antiretroviral therapy initiation on vitamin D levels and four oral diseases among Kenyan children and adolescents living with HIV”. We are happy to have Dr. Wang working with us and look forward to her continued collaboration in furthering oral health research.