Dr. Mascarenhas received the BDS in 1985 from the Goa Dental College and Hospital, Goa, India. She received the MPH in 1992 and the DrPH in 1995, from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dental Public Health and Fellow in Dental Surgery of the College Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.
Dr. Mascarenhas is Chair, Oral Health Florida and Member, Predoctoral Review Committee Commission on Dental Accreditation. Dr. Mascarenhas is past Chair of the American Dental Association’s Council of Scientific Affairs; Past President and Executive Director of the American Board of Dental Public Health; Past President of the American Association for Public Health Dentistry; and a past Commissioner, Commission on Dental Accreditation. Dr. Mascarenhas is a reviewer and on the editorial boards of several journals.
Dr. Mascarenhas has held numerous administrative and faculty positions in her 37 years in academia. From Professor and Associate Dean of Research and Community at Texas Tech Health Science Center El Paso; as Professor, Associate Dean of Research, Chief of Primary Care and Chief of Developmental Sciences at Nova Southeastern University College of Dental Medicine and as Professor, College of Osteopathic Medicine, Nova Southeastern University; at Boston University’s Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine as Director Division of Dental Public Health, Graduate Program Director in Dental Public Health and Professor, Health Policy and Health Services Research; College of Dentistry, The Ohio State University and held appointments in the College of Medicine and Public Health; as Scholar in the Center for Health Outcomes Policy & Evaluation Studies and at the John Glenn Institute for Public Service and Public Policy; and lecturer Goa Dental College and Hospital, Goa, India.
Dr. Mascarenhas’s primary areas of research interest are: in training, access to care, prevention, equity and diversity, oral health, oral epidemiology and health services research. Dr. Mascarenhas has taught extensively and published over 70 papers and presented nationally and internationally. Dr. Mascarenhas is the Executive Editor of the 7th Edition of Burt and Eklund’s Dentistry, Dental Practice, and the Community.
Dr. Mascarenhas is the principal investigator on several grants. She is the principal investigator of a School Oral Health Initiative by the Children’s Trust of Miami and two HRSA grants, one to train Community Health Workers in public health. Previously she has had many grants including to develop competencies and curriculum for dental and dental hygiene students in dental public health, Project White Coat a Health Careers Opportunity Program to develop, implement, and monitor programs to increase recruitment and retention of underrepresented minority and low-income students from Massachusetts and New Hampshire into Dentistry, and Program Director of the Dental Public Health Residency Training Grant funded by HRSA; project director of the New England Dental Access Project funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and PI on the Training and Career Development Core of the Northeast Center for Research to Reduce Oral Health Disparities funded by NIH.
In 2016, Mascarenhas won a Sapphire Blue Award for Smiles Across Miami and in 2018 the President’s award from the American Association of Public Health Dentistry.