Rate My Professor Susan Moffat

Associate Professor Susan Moffat is a key figure in the Department of Oral Sciences within the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Otago. She holds the positions of Head of Discipline for Oral Health and Convenor of the Bachelor of Oral Health (BOH) programme. Her academic qualifications include a PhD, Bachelor of Arts (BA), and Diploma in Public Health (DPH) from the University of Otago, as well as a Certificate in Dental Therapy (Cert. Dent. Therp.) from Wellington. With a background as a certified dental therapist, Moffat has dedicated her career to advancing dental education, public health, and workforce development. She coordinates several specialized courses, including DEOH303 Advanced Oral Health Therapy 2, DEOH580 Research Dissertation, and DEOH581 Research Dissertation. Additionally, she contributes to innovative programmes such as the Postgraduate Certificate in Health Sciences endorsed in Adult Restorative Dental Care, designed to expand therapists' skills in restorative procedures and improve access to dental care across New Zealand.

Moffat's principal research interests focus on dental public health, the history of dental therapy, and education and workforce issues in dental therapy and oral health therapy. She is acknowledged as one of the pioneers in dental therapy research, having laid essential groundwork for research foundations in these disciplines, which historically depended on related fields like paediatric dentistry and dental public health. Her publications reflect this expertise and include: Loch, C. et al. (2026), 'Sociodemographic characteristics of Aotearoa New Zealand oral health students: Do student cohorts reflect the society they will serve?', Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand; Carrington, S. et al. (2025), 'Ethnic and gender variation in dentition spacing of NZ children', Journal of Dental Research; Al-Busaidi, I. S. et al. (2024), 'Unacceptable behaviors towards health professional clinical students: Protocol for a mixed-methods study', Health Science Reports; Boyd, D. H. et al. (2023), 'Time to complain about pain: Children's self-reported procedural pain in a randomised control trial of Hall and conventional stainless-steel crown techniques', International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry; Moffat, S. M. et al. (2017), 'New Zealand's School Dental Service over the Decades', International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health; and Nash, D. A. et al. (2013), 'A Review of the Global Literature on Dental Therapists', Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology. Her PhD thesis explored the centennial history of New Zealand's school dental service, informing her subsequent scholarly contributions to dental workforce and public health strategies.