School of Dentistry and Department of Global Health faculty members helped lead the second Latin American Workshop on Clinical Research Methods in Oral Health, held Feb. 22-27 at Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Peru.

The conference, whose theme was “An Update on HIV,” was conducted jointly with the University of Washington School of Public Health and School of Dentistry. Dr. Joseph Zunt, Professor of Global Health and Professor of Neurology, was principal investigator on a Fogarty International Center training grant that funded the conference.

Thirty-two people attended this year’s conference, drawn from a pool of about 70 applicants made up mostly of junior faculty from Latin American universities.

Dentistry faculty presenters included:

• Susan Coldwell, Associate Dean (behavioral sciences)
• Timothy DeRouen, Director of the Center for Global Oral Health (randomized clinical trials)
• Ana Lucia Seminario, Pediatric Dentistry (epidemiology)
• Charles Spiekerman (biostatistics)

Dentistry alumnus Dr. Jorge Luis Castillo (Orthodontics Class of 2000), chair of pediatric dentistry at Caetano Heredia University, was a conference faculty member, as he was last year. The faculty also included Dr. Lilliam Pinzon of the University of California at San Francisco.

Last year’s workshop, which was also held at Cayetano Heredia University, marked the School of Dentistry’s first clinical training research foray into the Southern Hemisphere. The workshop is a shorter version of the school’s annual six-week Summer Institute in Clinical Dental Research Methods, which has helped hone the skills of researchers from around the world for more than 20 years.

Dr. Seminario, who also helped organize the 2014 workshop, said last year that it underscored the value of a face-to-face presentation.

“Culturally, it has a lot of impact when someone from a developed country goes to a developing country,” she said. “It also shows us the need for more training, and our goal is to encourage more evidence-based research.”

This article is cross-posted from the School of Dentistry Website.
Photo: University of Washington faculty presenters in Lima, Peru with colleauges from Caetano Heredia University. Courtesy of School of Dentistry.