Could you win International recognition for your work?

Could your research or activities which contribute to the promotion of oral health, win you International recognition? The Sunstar Foundation for Oral Health Promotion which supports The World Dental Hygienists Awards certainly hopes so and is looking for hygienists to put forward their projects for consideration.

The next awards will be presented at the 2010 IFDH meeting, which The British Society of Dental Hygiene and Therapy (BSDHT) is hosting in Glasgow, Scotland.

Award Categories

Why Now?

Sunstar also realised a need to recognise and to encourage dental hygienists and dental hygiene students who have made important contributions to the dental community, their profession or to the general public. So, in collaboration with International Federation of Dental Hygienists (IFDH) and International Journal of Dental Hygiene (IJDH), the first sets of awards were presented at the IFDH meeting in Toronto, Canada in 2007.

There were a total of 51 entries from 10 countries and the 2007 award recipients were as follows:

Research Category: "Risk for development of atherosclerosis in women with high amount of dental plaque and severe gingival inflammation." Birgitta Soder and Maha Yakob from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.

Project Category: "The experience of a Canadian dental hygienist in the Dominican Republic." Elina Katsman from Toronto, Canada reports on the activities carried out by "Sonrisas" to promote oral health.

Student Category: "Dental hygiene residential care in a 3-year dental hygiene education programme in Japan. Towards dysphagia management based on the dental hygiene process of care." Tomomi Nishimura, Chigusa Takahashi, and Eri Takahashi from the Miyagi Advanced Dental Hygienist College, Japan.

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Sunstar Foundation, the education and aid organisation of the world’s seventh largest oral health company, decided to establish an award to recognise the contribution of researchers in the field of periodontal health and systemic health studies. In 2003, at Euro Perio 4 in Berlin, Germany, the first sets of awards were given. A further set of awards were given at Euro Perio 5 in Madrid, Spain in 2006.