Harold C. Slavkin, DDS, is a professor and dean emeritus at the Herman Ostrow School of Dentistry, University of Southern California in Los Angeles. As former director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), one of the major accomplishments of his tenure at NIDCR was completion of the first U.S. Surgeon General’s Report, Oral Health in America, to focus exclusively on craniofacial and oral health. Slavkin is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. A
cofounder of the Santa Fe Group, an oral health think tank, he was recognized with the 2016 William J. Gies Award for Vision as a Dental Educator and the 2016 American Association for Dental Research Jack Hein Pubic Service Award for promoting oral health research activities to a wide constituency. He can be reached at slavkin@usc.edu.