Dr. Hend Alqaderi is an instructor at the Department of Oral Health Policy and Epidemiology at Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and she is serving as Interim Program Director of the Dental Public Health Residency at Harvard School of Dental Medicine.
Dr. Hend received her Bachelor of Dental Surgery Degree at the Faculty of Dentistry, Alexandria University, Egypt, and has a Doctor of Medical Sciences degree in Oral Biology and a Certificate in Dental Public Health from Harvard School of Dental Medicine.
She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Public Health, and she has a Certificate in Health Economics from the University of Washington, Seattle.
She was the recipient of the 2021 L’Oréal UNESCO Award for Talented Women in Science. She also was awarded the Lois Cohen Prize from Harvard University for her excellence in Global Health Research. Additionally, she received the Leverett Graduate Merit Award from the American Association of Public Health Dentistry for her Outstanding Achievement in Dental Public Health. Just last month, she was selected for the MIND for Future Program, by the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research; funded by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). This program aims to build a vibrant and inclusive community of investigators who will advance dental research and improve oral health in our nation.
Thorough her career, she worked in multiple clinical studies between the US and the Middle East. Her research area focuses on understanding the role of oral fluids in diagnosis of systemic diseases. As part of one of the largest longitudinal studies in the Middle East, she and her research team collected data from over 8,000 Kuwaiti children to study risk factors of obesity and diabetes, and they identified promising salivary biomarkers that helped predict of diabetes and obesity outcomes. Such findings, led to recommendations for lifestyle and system changes to health care providers and those involved in public health policy matters regarding the rapid increase in new cases of diabetes and inflammatory signs among children and teenagers in Kuwait.
Currently, she initiated a large COVID-19 cohort study to identify oral host-microbial signatures that will provide novel markers for predicting COVID-19 severity.