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New HDA President speaks at congress

Víctor Rodríguez, HDA Vice President, Sarita Arteaga, 2008 president, A. Isabel García, Deputy Director NICDR & Francisco J. Ramos-Gómez, the new president of the organization. (from left to right) (DTI/Photo Javier de Pison)
Javier de Pison, DT Latin America

Javier de Pison, DT Latin America

jue. 26 febrero 2009

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The new president of the Hispanic Dental Association (HDA) Francisco J. Ramos-Gómez, a researcher and professor of Pediatric Dentistry at the University of California at Los Angeles, opened the 15th annual congress of HDA with Isabel García, Deputy Director of the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research of United States (NIDCR), who was the main speaker. The attendance to the event of the second most important person at NICDR, the dental research center of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), shows the importance that HDA has acquired as the representative organization of Hispanic dentists in the USA.

Under the slogan The Keys to Optimize Hispanic Oral Health -Working Together for Success! the congress took place in the tourist town of Carefree, Arizona, USA, on the edge of Sonora Desert, with the participation of over 250 HDA members.

In addition to Isabel García, Gina Flores, health advisor for Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, who recently was named by Barack Obama as director of US national security, also participated. Other speakers included Carmela Castellano-García, President of the California Primary Care Association; and John Featherstone, Professor and Chair of the Department of Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences at the University of California in San Francisco, who developed topics of special interest to the Hispanic dental community, such as the access disparities between the growing population of Latinos in the USA and the professionals that serve them. Oscar Arevalo, Chief, Division of Dental Public Health at the University of Kentucky College of Dentistry, of Colombia, presented an overview of oral health in the US, emphasizing that a third of Americans have no access to oral health.

Posters presentation for the Arturo Santiago Award, sponsored by Dentsply, included work on Latino immigrants seeking dental care or the attitudes of dental students on HIV/AIDS. The HDA Students Chapters also participated in the competition Pride, sponsored by Procter & Gamble, which provides a prize of US$2,500.

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