GSDM’s Shenkin Third in Command among Dentists Nationwide
The American Dental Association (ADA) announced on Nov. 4, that Dr. Jonathan Shenkin of Freeport, Maine, clinical associate professor at Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine (GSDM), was elected ADA second vice president.
ADA vice president is a two-year position, with two VPs (first and second) serving at any time. In his second year next year, Dr. Shenkin will become first VP. Both VPs and the president-elect serve as voting members of the Board of Trustees, along with 17 others.
The election makes Shenkin the youngest member of the Board. The ADA House of Delegates also appointed Dr. Maxine Feinberg president-elect.
Dr. Shenkin is a faculty member in both the Department of Pediatric Dentistry and the Department of Health Policy & Health Services Research at GSDM. He joined Boston University in 2003.
“On behalf of all of us at GSDM, I extend my congratulations to Dr. Shenkin for this significant accomplishment,” said Dean Jeffrey W. Hutter. “We look forward to seeing how he will continue to positively influence the dental profession in this new role.”
Dr. Shenkin is well-known as an ADA spokesperson for pediatric dentistry topics. He regularly comments on public policy issues related to tobacco, unhealthy beverages, and a broad range of dental topics.
Dr. Shenkin’s early policy efforts centered on reducing the availability of soda in public schools. He was appointed to the Maine Legislature’s Commission to Study Public Health, and served as the chair of the subcommittee on Children, Nutrition and Schools. This role led to an invitation by the Institute of Medicine to serve on an expert panel on school nutrition.
Later policy efforts focused on banning smoking in cars with children, leading to the successful effort to ban smoking in cars in Bangor, Maine, the first city in the nation to do so. He later led the successful effort on the state level in Maine.
His current interests are in clinical decision making by pediatric and general dentists. He continues his long term interest in reducing the dental disease risk among young children.
Dr. Shenkin served as chair of the ADA’s Council on Communications for 2012–13 and was a longtime consultant on nutrition and community issues to the ADA Council on Access, Prevention and Interprofessional Relations. He has been an ADA member for 21 years. He is a past president of the Maine Dental Association and served on the board of the Maine Dental Political Action Committee.
He maintains private practices in pediatric dentistry in Augusta, and Waterville, Maine.
He is a member of the of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry, American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Dentists, International College of Dentists, and the Academy of General Dentistry.
He earned a DDS from Columbia University in New York. He also received an MPH and Certificate in Health Care Finance and Management from Johns Hopkins University and a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study in Pediatric Dentistry at the University of Iowa. He completed a dental public health residency at the National Institutes of Health.
Submitted by GSDM Communications.