About the Guest:

Dr Kadambari Rawal, fondly known by her students and patients as “Dr. Kady” is currently living and working in Boston and holds faculty appointments at both Boston University and Harvard University. For well over a decade, she has been part of BU Dental Health Center’s Faculty Practice where she provides full mouth rehabilitation and comprehensive dental services to adults, older adults and special needs patients. She exclusively practices geriatric dental medicine at the long term care facilities of Hebrew Senior Life and teaches minimally invasive, evidence-based dental medicine strategies for patients with healthcare needs as well as those needing treatment in long term care settings.

She has served on the boards of organizations like the American Association of Women Dentists as their Editor in Chief and currently serves as the Immediate Past Chair of the Boston District Dental Society as the board’s first woman of color to do so. She is the Chair of the American Dental Education Associations’s special interest group on Internationally Educated Oral Health Professionals. She also serves on the board of Smiles For Success Foundation, an organization bringing no cost dental makeovers to women graduates of job placement programs in the US and is the current President of the AAWD Boston, Massachusetts chapter. She has contributed to several clinical outreach efforts to bring dental care and oral health education to women and older adults locally, nationally and internationally. She has worked with outreach projects like Missions of Mercy, TeamSmiles, Give Kids a Smile, Smiles for Success and Saving Senior Smiles and India’s first oral health NGO-Angel Dentists Network as their International Liaison.

Dr. Rawal has won accolades from academic institutions and professional societies and was awarded the prestigious Lucy Hobbs Award in the category of “Woman to watch” in 2016, in 2019 she was awarded the honor of “Ten under ten” by Massachusetts Dental Society and the American Dental Association giving her national recognition as America’s top ten most accomplished dentists under ten years of practice. In 2021 she was awarded the DentaQuest Health Equity award for continuing to provide dental care to the vulnerable geriatric population throughout the pandemic. She holds Fellowships in the American Society of Geriatric Dentists, the International College of Dentists, the American College of Dentists and the Pierre Fauchard Academy. She has lectured on Geriatric Dental Medicine at prestigious conventions like the American Dental Association, American Dental Education Association and FDI World Dental Congresses with audiences in North America, South America, Europe & Asia. She has also worked with universities in India to add Geriatrics to their BDS curriculum. Dr. Rawal treats centenarians (patients over the age of 100) on a weekly basis and dreams of a day when geriatric dental medicine is in the forefront of medical care and older adults can enjoy their golden years free of oral disease. Dr. Rawal is also an avid painter, baker, organic gardener and lives with her husband and son in Boston.

About this course:

Oral health is part of overall health. In this course, Dr. Kadambari Rawal discusses how dental care is siloed and often not perceived as a key aspect of public health. She highlights the importance of oral health and its relation to systemic diseases. She enlists challenges faced by people with dental problems.

Dr. Rawal further discusses the significance of physician wellness which requires systemic and structural changes made more evident during the covid-19 pandemic. She talks about an inspiring and challenging experience over her public health journey. Dr. Rawal emphasizes the need for public policy changes to reflect the need for oral health access, especially financial access and universal oral health coverage.

Learning Objectives:

• Exploring the interrelationship between oral health and systemic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease
• Understanding the importance of public policy and oral health accessibility

Public Health and Social Justice Topics Covered:

• Dental Health
• Health Policy