Rate My Professor Gail Douglas

Professor Gail V. A. Douglas is Professor (Clinical) of Dental Public Health, Head of the Department of Dental Public Health, Research Lead for Dental Public Health and Health Services Research, and Programme Lead for the MSc in Dental Public Health at the University of Leeds School of Dentistry. She holds qualifications including FDS(DPH)RCS(Edinburgh), FDS RCS(Edin), PhD, MPH, BDS (honours), and BMSc (first class honours) in Medical Psychology from the University of Dundee. Between 1987 and 1993, she studied Dental Surgery at Dundee, graduating with honours in first place in her class and completing an intercalated BMSc. Awarded a Joint MRC/Health Region Special Training Fellowship in Health Services Research in 1995 at the Dental Health Services Research Unit, University of Dundee, she completed her MPH in 1997 and PhD in 2001 on secondary caries misdiagnosis and health economic analyses of patients’ and dentists’ caries diagnostic preferences. She undertook specialty training in dental public health from 2000 to 2004 in Fife and Tayside NHS boards, serving as honorary senior lecturer in public health medicine. She held locum consultant roles in dental public health in Lothian and Borders NHS boards, then directed the Caries Control Research Programme at Dundee from 2004 to 2009. She took up her current post at Leeds in September 2009 and is seconded one day per week to the English national dental public health team on the dental intelligence and epidemiology programme.

Professor Douglas's research interests include dental public health, population oral health, dental epidemiology, caries detection, assessment, prevention and tooth-preserving management, primary dental care research, caries outcome measures, health services research, and epidemiology. She has led major funded projects, including as joint chief investigator for the NIHR HTA FiCTION trial (£2.9 million, 2010-2018) evaluating child caries management strategies, co-applicant for the NIHR HTA INTERVAL trial (£2.6 million, 2011-2017) and NIHR SDO INCENTIVE study (£500,000, 2012-2015), workpackage leader for the EU Horizon 2020 ADVOCATE study (£1.7 million to Leeds, 2015-2019), and co-chief investigator for the HSDR COMMIT study (£296,936, 2021-2023). Key publications are 'Adult Dental Health Survey 2009: common oral health conditions and their impact on the population' (British Dental Journal, 2012), 'CariesCare practice guide: consensus on evidence into practice' (British Dental Journal, 2019), 'ICCMS™ guide for practitioners and educators' (2014), 'Consumption frequency of added sugars and UK children's dental caries' (Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology, 2018), and 'Factors associated with antibiotic prescribing for adults with acute conditions' (Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy, 2019). Since 2002, she has coordinated the International Caries Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS) collaboration and contributed to the International Caries Classification and Management System (ICCMS) and Caries Care International. She is Past President of the British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry, Past Chair of the UK Specialty Advisory Committee for Dental Public Health, UK Dental Epidemiology Scientific Lead, Chair of the BASCD Dental Epidemiology Group, and ORCA Advisory Board member. She received the Colgate undergraduate prize in 1993.