Dr Stefan Serban

Profile

I am a Consultant in Dental Public Health at NHS England North West covering Lancashire and South Cumbria and Visiting Senior Lecturer in Dental Public Health at the University of Leeds.

After completing my dental degree in Oradea, Romania, I continued my studies with a master's degree in public health at Maastricht University, followed by an executive programme at Harvard and a PhD at the University of Birmingham. After this, I continued with clinical specialist training in dental public health in Leeds. My career has allowed me to gain a well-rounded perspective on the links between research, policy, and clinical services.

In my 10+ years in this field, I have been fortunate enough to work on various oral health and wider public health initiatives with stakeholders ranging from local and central governments to healthcare service providers and the broader health and social care sector.
Most recently, I had the privilege of leading on a project close to my heart - improving access to dental care for people experiencing homelessness in Leeds. The lessons learned from this led to a wider roll out of this programme in other areas of England.
I strongly believe that we need good quality data to inform policy and commissioning decisions. To this end, I have supported the development of a data driven toolkit to help the equitable distribution of funding for dental care services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to find creative solutions for pressing problems often when there was no precedent and I was very pleased to have been involved in setting up a programme that allowed dentists to administer flu- and covid vaccinations. This was a first in England and it has the potential to support further integration of primary care services between medicine, dentistry and beyond.

Research interests

Primary research theme: Dental Public Health and Health Services

Secondary research theme: Clinical and Applied

Research interests: oral health inequalities; the associations between oral and systemic health; periodontitis and rheumatoid arthritis; health services research; integration of medical and dental care 

Qualifications

• FDS(DPH) RCSEd
• PhD
• MPH
• DMD

Professional memberships

• Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
• British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry
• European Association for Dental Public Health
• International Association for Dental Research
• British Dental Association

Research groups and institutes

• Health services research