First in the Nation

Since its early teaching activity in 1936, the North Carolina Dental Public Health program has had an outstanding 80-year history that is summarized into five themes. It has served as a key resource for training the dentists in public health, which has benefited the state of North Carolina. It has provided the science base for improving oral health with new prevention technologies. The program has advanced public health practice and collaborations with state and federal agencies, and it has maintained a robust research program that developed methods for solving population-based problems. Finally, it has offered a comprehensive teaching program that supported the knowledge base for the MPH program and research methods for PhD students in epidemiology and health services research. The UNC research focus on early childhood caries reversed the increase observed in statewide surveys, and its prevention methods have been adopted nationally. Rozier also documents the first courses in dental public health which provided definitions and direction for the specialty. Oral diseases are largely preventable, but they affect more than three billion people worldwide. First in the Nation is elegantly convincing in its message-that a major health sciences campus without a comprehensive Dental Public Health academic program is intellectually devoid of part of its purpose for being.