Jean Mary Richemond

I was impressed by the standard of the courses and the high expectation for excellence. I appreciated the wide variety of modules I undertook during my year at the University of Leeds.

I would encourage future students to make the leap and choose the University of Leeds not only because Leeds is a great city but also because this is a leading UK university. There is a wide breadth of modules within the Dental Public Health course and the staff are very welcoming and supportive.

I chose to study a Masters Degree in Dental Public Health because I wanted to have a greater impact on larger portions of the population.  I had spent 7 years working as a clinical dentist, 5 years of which was in a hospital in a remote area in Haiti. I was seeing multiple patients on a day to day basis, but after conducting some outreach activities in the community I understood that to influence behaviour change and improve the oral health of that community I needed to implement public health approaches targeting the entire population rather than curing single patients every day.  I wanted to study Dental Public Health which I believed would help me think critically and address the different dental public health challenges and health inequalities.

I chose the School of Dentistry at the University of Leeds because of 3 major reasons. Firstly, when I was looking for a university, the University of Leeds always come up as one of the top universities in the UK and I had always aspired to study at a leading university. Secondly, the Dental Public Health Programme outlined on the Dentistry School website was very much in line with what I wanted to learn such as Health Promotion, Epidemiology, Principles of Dental Public Health, Foundation of Public Health and I was very excited to undertake my degree with the school. Lastly, I researched and found out that the city of Leeds was very student-friendly and had a very large international student community. I wanted to meet, share ideas and learn from students from all over the world.

My highlight was my research project where I investigated the inequality homeless people in Leeds faced in accessing dental health services in comparison to the general population. I am very proud of this achievement.

I received tremendous support from not only the Programme Director but also all the staff involved in the Dental Public Health programme. I had a great tutor who was very supportive and from whom I learned a lot especially while writing my research project.

I am currently an Oral Health Promotion Officer with Whittington Health NHS Trust in London. I use the knowledge and skills learnt from my Masters Degree to promote oral health and reduce oral health inequality among vulnerable populations in Camden and Islington boroughs.