Bringing the conversation about Indigenous oral health to Mexico

U of T associate professor Herenia Lawrence and Fabio Arriola, PhD student in Dental Public Health, recently travelled to Mexico for a knowledge mobilization and research dissemination opportunity. 

Lawrence leads the Faculty of Dentistry’s Indigenous Oral Health group. The group works to advance equitable and culturally safe oral health care for the Indigenous populations. 

They work closely with different collaborators including First Nations health authorities in Ontario and Manitoba. Currently there are four graduate students, including Arriola, working with Lawrence. 

Originally from Guatemala, Arriola trained and worked as a pediatric dentist in Mexico. “I decided to pursue my PhD in dental public health to bridge the gap between clinical dentistry and research. In my experience, sometimes clinicians talk one language, and researchers talk another.” says Arriola. 

Through spending time working as a dentist in Indigenous communities in Guatemala, he has seen the impacts of inequities in oral health care firsthand. “A large part of oral disease is preventable in children. I believe that we should be doing more from a public health perspective. Indigenous populations continue to be underserved.” 

“This visit was a significant opportunity to establish potential partnerships for international collaboration and to broaden U of T’s influence in the field of dental public health,” says Lawrence. 

While in Merida, Mexico, Arriola and Lawrence attended the Global Oral Health Forum hosted by the University of Pennsylvania´s Center for Integrative Global Oral Health, where they had the opportunity to connect with participants from across the globe. 

Arriola and Lawrence also had the opportunity to give two talks to faculty members and dental students at the Autonomous University of Yucatan’s Faculty of Dentistry (UADY). It was a significant milestone for Arriola, who completed his undergraduate and graduate dentistry training at UADY. 

During the visit, Arriola gave a lecture on his experiences bringing together dental public health with clinical dentistry. Lawrence’s presentation explored some new interventions to address early childhood caries among Indigenous children and included unpublished results of her CIHR-funded Nishtam Niwiipitan (My First Teeth) Study. 

“It was important to continue the conversation on Indigenous oral health, as the Yucatan Peninsula, where UADY is located, is home to many Indigenous Maya, with 30.3 per cent of the state’s population identifying as Indigenous,” said Lawrence. 

Learn more about the graduate dental public health program at U of T.

Written by Nina Ambros