Project Director: Kelli McCormack Brown, Ph.D., CHES

The Oral Health Network (OHN) Coordinating Center (hereafter referred to as OHN Center) provides a forum and network for Prevention Research Centers and oral health researchers to build an ongoing, sustainable network that encourages and enhances community-based oral health research. The OHN Center's primary research priority will be to fund mini-grants that emphasize participatory research, multilevel and ecological research, and cross cutting research, as well as addressing Healthy People 2010 oral health objectives, and the recommendations from the Surgeon General's report on oral health. The OHN Center mini-grant application process focuses on integration of community-based oral health research into existing and ongoing PRC projects. The mini-grant process also provides a mechanism for pilot projects, which may strengthen future applications for private or public funding of oral health research. The OHN Center's goal is three fold: 1) integration of community-based oral health research with the individual PRC's research agenda, 2) enhance the collaboration among PRCs, state health departments, schools of dentistry, and other disciplines (i.e., social sciences), and 3) enhance the PRC's visibility as a resource in developing and implementing applied, community-based oral health research.