Oral Health Faculty Development Fellowship

Funded by the George E. Richmond Foundation, the Oral Health Faculty Development Fellowship is a part of the Program in Oral Health, Systemic Health, Well-being, and the Social Sciences. The goal of the Fellowship is to promote the development of faculty at the University of Chicago who incorporate oral health into their research programs, incubate both basic and translational research projects to improve our understanding of oral health, and suggest promising pathways for policy and practice improvements in the field.

CHeSS is not currently accepting applications for the Oral Health Faculty Development Fellowship.

The award of $35,000 may be used to pay for data, cover effort or some combination thereof.  Successful proposals will promote the development of new insights and/or methods for translating those insights into clinical and policy contexts.  Applications are rated based on scientific merit; adequacy and feasibility of the research plan; the importance of the research question; potential to have direct, practical application; innovation and originality in approach, methods, or aims, and plans for dissemination to researchers and the public, where appropriate.  Awardees are expected to submit brief quarterly reports, submit a final report and speak about the research project at an oral health workshop or symposium.

The application is available through a web form and is accessible here.  Application materials include:

  1. A current CV
  2. A one-page candidate description including an explanation of how this research fits into the candidate’s long-term goals
  3. A description of the proposed research project (2-3 pages)

Please contact Kelsey Bogue, program administrator, with any questions.

Current Fellows

Gregory Ruhnke, MD, MS, MPH 
Project: Oral Health and the Risk of Aspiration Pneumonia
Dr. Ruhnke is a Hospitalist at the University of Chicago whose research expertise includes the measurement of outcomes, quality, and resource utilization among pneumonia patients. With support from the Oral Health Faculty Development Fellowship, he aims to further understand the relationship between oral health and patient risk for pneumonia by conducting a comprehensive literature review, assessing the care currently provided to hospitalized patients with poor oral hygiene, and testing the feasibility of enrolling patients into a randomized trial to assess an oral care intervention.