Abbas Jessani, DDS, MSc, PhD
Abbas Jessani, DDS, MSc, PhD
(He, his, him)
Assistant Professor
Appointments
- Department of Restorative Dentistry, Schulich Dentistry
- Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics
Research Cluster Membership
- Behavioral and Environmental Risk Factors
- Global Health
- Marginalized Populations and Social Determinants of Health
- Mental Health and Addiction
- Epidemiological Observational Studies
- Health Service Research
- Knowledge Translation
Research Interests
- Barriers to health care and oral health services in marginalized communities such as living with HIV/HCV, Refugees, Indigenous population and LGBTQ2S
- Global health
- Stigma and discrimination towards visible minorities
- Health service researh
- Oral health service research
- Community based participatory research.
Biography
Dr. Abbas Jessani is a tenure-track assistant professor in the department of restorative dentistry and the coordinator for community dental outreach at Schulich School or Medicine and Dentistry, University of Western Ontario. Dr. Jessani has completed his graduate training with a focus on Public Health Dentistry at the UBC Faculty of Dentistry, where he earned his MSc and PhD. During this endeavor, Dr. Jessani explored the unmet oral health needs of vulnerable and marginalized populations such as people living with HIV, Refugees and Pregnant Women in British Columbia, Canada. He also looked into the experiences of stigma and discrimination faced by HIV-positive community members while accessing healthcare services in BC. While finishing his PhD, Dr. Jessani headed the department of Operative Dentistry at the University of Saskatchewan where his teaching philosophy focused on risk based patient management and minimally invasive dentistry.
He has led several dental outreach programs at UBC and University of Saskatchewan since 2011 and, has won several awards for this excellence in teaching and research. Presently he is the course director for preclinical operative dentistry and is also leading the community dental outreach at Schulich Dentistry. His work is looking into the barriers of accessing healthcare and oral care services in marginalized communities, particularly from lower SES, HIV/HCV-positive, LGBTQ2S and Indigenous community members in Saskatchewan and Ontario. In the area of global health, he is very keen in looking into access to oral care dipartites in low income African countries such as Uganda and Southern Africa.
