June 12, 2018

Presented by: Alice M. Horowitz, PhD, Research Associate Professor, School of Public Health, University of Maryland

About this seminar: Dr. Alice Horowitz, a health educator, formerly was a senior scientist, National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Health (NIDCR), National Institutes of Health (NIH).  Dr. Horowitz has extensive work in dental caries prevention and early detection. While at the NIDCR she organized the Consensus Development Conference, on Pit and Fissure Sealants and co-organized one on Dental Caries Diagnosis and Management.  

Dr. Horowitz was instrumental in initiating the need to address health literacy in dentistry and was one of the authors of the first NIH Program Announcement addressing health literacy. She organized the NIDCR’s workshop on oral health literacy and co-authored the resultant findings. Currently she is a Co-Chair of the Education/health literacy Sub-Committee of the Maryland Dental Action Coalition, a group commissioned by Maryland’s Secretary of Health and Mental Hygiene, John Colmers following the tragic and untimely death of Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old boy who died in 2007 because of an untreated dental infection. She serves as the PI of a statewide oral health literacy needs assessment study. 

She served on a recent Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) panel, Advancing Oral Health in America. She has contributed several invited presentations to the IOM’s Round Table on Health Literacy. She has published over 130 scientific papers and book chapters and is the recipient of several awards. Dr. Horowitz conceptualized, designed and conducted the study, Health Literacy Environmental Scans of Community-based Dental Clinics in Maryland and published in the American Journal of Public Health.