Oral Health Dissertation Fellows

Current Fellows

Meet our current fellows here. 

Past Fellows

Patti Ritter, PhD
Current Position: 
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Connecticut
Project: Keep Smiling and Stop Drinking: Oral Health and Carbonated Soft Drinks
Patti is interested in the interaction between development and health economics. The central topic of her dissertation is the causal relationship between carbonated soft drinks (CSD) consumption and health in developing countries. With support from the Oral Health Dissertation Fellowship, she is currently studying the effects of the expansion of the CSD industry on oral health in Peru. She has also written on the effect of the expansion in the CSD industry on obesity prevalence in Peru, and the effects of access to piped water on obesity prevalence in Morocco.

Haena Lee, PhD
Current Position: Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
Project: Where We Live Matters for Health: Social and Physical Environments, Psychosocial Stress, Oral Health in Later Life
In her project, Haena studied the impact of stress from disordered living conditions on oral health status and utilization of oral health care in later life. Specifically, the aims of her project were to: 1) determine whether disordered living conditions induce psychosocial distress; 2) examine whether psychosocial distress is associated with the adoption of unhealthy coping behaviors and subsequently lead to development of poor dental health; 3) assess whether social support mediates the impact of smoking on poor oral health; and 4) compare the operation of psychosocial distress on oral health between the Baby Boomer cohort and pre-WWII birth cohorts.