Dr. Ana Lucia Seminario is the recipient of the 2017 Sunstar Americas, Inc. Research Prevention in Oral Health Award for her team’s research proposal titled “Integrating oral health into the pediatric HIV care continuum: Baseline data of oral and systemic inflammation.” This award will provide a $25,000 grant to support the research project, which seeks to find the association between oral health manifestations in Kenyan children with HIV to advocate for an oral health program in Kenya.
The project will be incorporated into the Kenyan Pediatric Studies, a National Institutes of Health-funded series of R01 grants for collaborative HIV research by the University of Washington and the University of Nairobi. Dr. Seminario believes that by “researching in oral health prevention we are investing in our general health” and improving the quality of life of many underserved populations.
Dr. Seminario will be principal investigator of the project, whose team includes:
- Dr. Jennifer Slyker, Assistant Professor of the UW Department of Global Health
- Dr. Dalton Wamalwa, Associate Professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Child Health at the University of Nairobi
- Dr. Arthur Kemoli, University of Nairobi Chair of Pediatric Dentistry & Orthodontics
- Dr. Georgios Kotsakis, Assistant Professor of the Department of Periodontics
- Dr. Sarah Benki-Nugent, microbiologist and epidemiologist
- Dr. Brandon Guthrie, Assistant Professor in the UW Department of Global Health
- Dr. Eduardo Bernabe, epidemiologist at the King’s College London
- Daisy Chebet, research nurse
- Marcus Hwang, UW dental student
The Sunstar award encourages interdisciplinary collaborative research projects centered on preventive dentistry and focusing on oral complications of systemic diseases; dental caries prevention; periodontal health; social, economic, and behaviorial aspects of preventive dentistry; and more.
The Timothy A. DeRouen Center for Global Oral Health aims to improve communities’ health by including an oral health component in UW projects worldwide through research and scientific discoveries.