What inspired you to become part of the dental profession?
My uncle is a dentist, who practices in New York. Through most of my life I was considering medicine. My uncle encouraged me to consider dentistry when I was an undergraduate student at Cornell University.

What is your specialty, and how did you get there?
Public health dentistry.

How long have you been involved in the profession?
I came to New York to participate in the general practice dental residency program at Harlem Hospital and practice general dentistry with my uncle. It was an awakening experience to see what was happening in Harlem. I grew up in Toronto, Canada, where there is universal health care. In Harlem you see the disparities in health every day. It set me back quite a bit. In my second-year residency in Harlem, I was recruited by Columbia University to be a clinical investigator on a research grant examining the oral manifestations of HIV in injecting drug users.

Then I went into practice with my uncle; four days of practice, two days of research. After successfully running the research grant at Harlem Hospital, I was selected by the then dean of the Columbia University dental school, Dr. Allan Formicola, to enroll in the Columbia University School of Public Health to earn my master's degree. He helped solidify my public health specialty while I was still working on the HIV/AIDS study. Upon completion, I worked with Dean Formicola to help establish the Community DentCare Network in Harlem. We wanted to be sure that quality dental care was delivered in community-based settings in Harlem. The Community DentCare Network now has eight school-based dental clinics and a mobile vehicle; and I was able to help build the Dr. Thelma C. Davidson Adair Medical/Dental Center, a $2.5 million, state-of-the-art health facility named after a retired educator and activist in Harlem.

While doing all this, I still continued practicing with my uncle on Saturdays and evenings. My uncle has now sold his Manhattan practice, which has enabled me to begin treating patients at the Adair Center. We have dental students, residents and dental faculty treating patients side-by-side. I hope that it will become a model for how to deliver oral health care in the inner city; it's an opportunity to bring all patient populations together.

What has been your inspiration to do all this work?
I have been blessed to be part of a wonderful team at Columbia University. The initial leadership came from Dean Formicola, when he opened the dental school to the community. He was uniquely positioned as an established leader to initiate such an effort, having survived three university presidents. He retired in 2001 after having served 23 years as dean of Columbia's dental school. He believed in me and saw that my leadership abilities positioned me well to lead the expansion of dental health services in Harlem.

Young African American men don't normally get these opportunities. I always say that all you had to do was open the door. The dean worked hard to ensure that the usual restraints of an academic institution did not hold us back. The Kellogg Foundation spurred us with a $1.2 million grant to get the school-based clinics off the ground. We were able to secure more funds from foundations and estate funds. We built a mobile vehicle with two state-of-the-art chairs, and now the bus travels to 40 Head Start and day care centers to treat children and senior citizens in northern Manhattan. We have brought African American and Latino practitioners into the community. I look at all of this as an honor and blessing to be part of. How often does anyone get this opportunity, let alone a black man in America?

How do you address health care disparities among minority populations within your profession?
We need to get rid of existing disease that comes from past dental neglect, as well as prevent new dental disease of the future. A lot can be done with children 3-4 years old. They need to understand that it is a regular routine to see the dentist two times a year.

This is part of what we can all do. Inner-city kids don't get access to dental sealants. We are trying to offer dental sealants to all children. The problem is that when we would open the mouths of children who didn't have good oral health habits, we would see rampant dental disease. We couldn't only do preventive medicine because we were too far behind. We had to implement new protocols of scaling and cleaning, and convert our clinics to full-service treatment centers for children.

What do you like best about working in the field?
To be able to start programs, open facilities, provide access to care for people who didn't have access before, change children's lives, develop a mobile vehicle program. The things that I do make a difference in lives every day.

Through our programs we also are providing opportunity for minority faculty. Columbia University School of Dental & Oral Surgery now has the largest proportion of minority faculty of all the dental schools in the country. This opens up access to the profession. There currently is a tremendous push to increase the number of minority providers. The Institute of Medicine Report has shown that minority providers treat minority patients. We need to increase those numbers. I have been able to help the dental school at Columbia become a part of the MMEP, a minority recruitment initiative for medical schools sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. We now have one of only two national MMEP dental pilot programs at Columbia.

What, if any, barriers or challenges have you personally had to overcome?
I was raised the son of three teachers (mother, father and stepfather). So, although I am a product of divorce, I've had three loving parents. My mom is deceased (died in 1993), and she was a huge influence on my life. I was the student council president in dental school, so she was able to see me give the speech at my dental school graduation, but unfortunately she can't see what I am doing today.

I was always bright in school and received scholarships. Life was good. We were not wealthy, but we were not poor. Education was always most important. At 27 years old, when I was in Harlem, I realized how bad it was in the inner cities. It changed my life. I was blessed that I was successful enough in what I did to be able to be offered opportunities that could help make a difference.

What are the greatest challenges within the profession?
One of the problems within the profession is that we don't publicize what we do. Over 80 percent of those in the dental profession open offices and take care of patients. Very few of us concentrate on public health dentistry. There are very few accolades in the field of public health dentistry, even though there are things that we do that are quite phenomenal. But there still is a lot of work ahead of us.

The good news is that we are helping a significant number of people with public health dentistry. In Manhattan alone, there are 70,000 visits to the dental school clinic and 30,000 at Harlem Hospital. Now we see close to an additional 40,000 dental visits off site, which includes school-based, mobile vehicle and neighborhood visits.

What are your plans for the future?
I'd like to continue to move up into the administration of academic dentistry. I've always had a warm spot for Howard University, my dental school alma mater, but I'm not done in New York yet.

I'd like to someday see public health dentistry at the forefront of dentistry. There are so many unsung heroes doing good work in the field. I'd like to see this movement continue nationally. I'd like to see the leadership in dentistry do something about the disparities in oral health care in this country. We talk about it, but the resources have not been put on the table to actually treat and make a difference.

What words of wisdom do you have for students just graduating?
Consider dentistry and, in particular, public health dentistry as an option. It comes from the heart. You have to be driven to do it. Even if you can't give back full time, consider giving back part of your time. Deliver services to the underserved because there are not enough in our profession who do that.

What do you like to do in your spare time?
My family gets all of the time that is left over from my career, but I do love to travel. I have had the opportunity to travel and speak on research in Western Europe on two occasions and took advantage of the opportunity to stay awhile and visit many countries.