Newcastle University

Professor Gail Douglas

• FiCTION Joint Chief Investigator & Clinical Lead for Leeds & Sheffield
• Professor and Honorary Consultant in Dental Public Health, Leeds Dental Institute, University of Leeds

Professor Gail Douglas BMSc(Hons) BDS(Hons) PhD MPH FDS RCS(Ed) FDS (DPH) RCS. Gail graduated from Dundee Dental School in December 1993 and obtained a first class honours degree in Medical Psychology.  Shortly after graduating, Gail joined the staff of DHSRU on a four year Medical Research Council Training Fellowship in Health Services Research. In addition, she was also awarded a Certificate in Health Economics (University of Aberdeen 1996), the Master of Public Health degree (University of Dundee, 1997) and a PhD (University of Dundee, 2001) on misdiagnosis of caries in restored teeth. Gail’s interest in epidemiology took her to Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited island in the world, to lead a small research team conducting a survey of oral and dental health. In 1999, she was appointed as a Specialist Registrar in Dental Public Health in Fife NHS Board where she completed her specialist training and from 2003 worked as a Locum Consultant in Dental Public Health for Lothian and Borders NHS Boards.  She was appointed as Dental Caries Control Programme Director in DHSRU in 2004. Within this role she had taken a lead in local, national and international projects with an epidemiological focus, from being the academic lead for training and calibrating dentists for National caries surveys in Scotland for the past 5 years  to being  co-ordinator to the  International Caries  Detection and  Assessment System (ICDAS) collaboration - an international collaboration of experts in cariology from academic institutions worldwide and is one of the directors of the ICDAS Foundation.   Research interests include the standardisation of clinical assessments of dental caries across the  fields  of dental practice, research, epidemiology and  education; improving the  quality  and  efficiency  of training dental epidemiologists; and the feasibility of conducting epidemiological surveys in clinical practice. Currently, Gail is an examiner for the Intercollegiate Specialty Fellowship, Examination and a member of the Specialist Advisory Committee for Dental Public Health.  In September 2009, Gail took up a post at the University of Leeds as Chair and Head of the Department of Dental Public Health.  Gail is Joint Chief Investigator in the FiCTION trial and brings expertise in standardised caries assessment to this trial as well as experience in co-ordinating collaborative working across multiple institutions.