GSDM's Henshaw Named 2011 Recipient of the William J. Gies Award for Innovation
The ADEAGies Foundation recently announced it will honor Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM) Professor & Assistant Dean for Community Partnerships and Extramural Affairs Dr. Michelle Henshaw with the 2011 William J. Gies Award for Innovation in the Dental Educator category.
“Congratulations to Dr. Michelle Henshaw for being selected for this prestigious award,” said Dean Jeffrey W. Hutter. “She is an excellent choice given that from the onset of her professional career she has been deeply committed to the integration of teaching, research, and service with community engagement. The hallmarks of all her efforts and many successes have been her creativity and innovation in driving institutional change.”
Dr. Henshaw will be presented with the Award at the Gies Awards celebration to be held on March 14, 2011, in San Diego, California, in conjunction with the 2011 ADEA Annual Session & Exhibition.
The Gies Awards, named after dental education pioneer Dr. William J. Gies, honor individuals and organizations exemplifying dedication to the highest standards of vision, innovation, and achievement in dental education, research, and leadership.
Dr. Henshaw was nominated for the award based on her successful integration of teaching, translational research and clinical service, and outreach activities within the GSDM curriculum. She has initiated and successfully fostered partnerships with a myriad of community organizations which have resulted in more than 50 community-based service programs that provide oral health care to underserved populations throughout Massachusetts. The partnerships serve as the foundation for meaningful service learning experiences for students and are integral components of the GSDM dental education curriculum.
“As a result of her innovative leadership, the GSDM administration, faculty, student body, and alumni have internalized the principles of community engagement and her efforts have served to transform the institutional culture of the School,” said Dean Hutter. “This is demonstrated by the fact that 100% of our students now participate in the mandatory service learning curriculum that she designed and whose implementation she led. In addition, faculty involvement in non-curricular community outreach activities has increased by 25% and student involvement has increased by 50%.”
The partnerships she developed have also contributed to research activities, including GSDM’s NIH-supported Northeast Center for Research to Evaluate and Eliminate Dental Disparities (CREED), established in 2001 and funded to 2015. Dr. Henshaw serves as CREED’s Co-Director and as the Co-Principal Investigator on the NIH award. She has also collaborated with the Boston Public Health Commission’s Healthy Baby/Healthy Child program on a grant from the Aetna Foundation to develop an oral health promotion intervention that would be delivered as part of a pre- and post-natal home visiting program. This work then led to an R21 award in 2006 from the NIDCR to implement and test the intervention. Dr. Henshaw also received one of only two health policy grants that the Massachusetts Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation awarded in order to determine if there were racial and ethnic disparities in community water fluoridation in Massachusetts.
Dr. Henshaw’s efforts are not limited to GSDM, at the national level she has been a tireless advocate for incorporating service learning and community engagement into dental education. She has written journal articles, a book chapter, and a monograph on these topics. Her efforts have gained her national recognition, as evidenced by her selection as a Fellow of the Community-Campus Partnerships for Health; her selection as a Health Disparities Scholar by the NIH National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities; her roles as Director of the HRSA-funded Community-based Dental Partnership program; her role as the GSDM Co-Director of one of the fifteen Pipeline, Profession and Practice: Community-based Dental Education grants funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; as well as by the numerous invitations to lecture on service learning and community engagement at local and national meetings.
“The ADEAGies Foundation could not have chosen a recipient more deserving of this award than Dr. Michelle Henshaw,” said Professor and Chair of Health Policy & Health Services Research Dr. Raul Garcia. “She is responsible for countless innovative ideas that have resulted in improved oral health for underserved populations and her passion for eliminating oral health disparities is an inspiration. She is truly a role model for students, faculty, and staff in the Department of Health Policy & Health Services Research and we are all very proud of her.”