A cardiovascular disease surveillance study in Santiago atitlán, Guatemala: A model of community-centered, participatory health research

training of local caregivers to ensure the sustainability. The program will be evaluated in two different school populations in rural Kenya to determine the specific challenges and effectiveness in each community. While both schools serve students of extremely low socio-economic status with poor oral health and lack of access to dental care, students at one school are boarded while at other they live at home with their families. Outcomes & Evaluation: Data collection will be done through the novel University Health Network (UHN) system. The UHN is a consortium of leading research institutions, designed to allow for highly scaled infrastructure for the secure collection, storage or sharing of clinical data in a cost-effective manner. A global information system (GIS) will be used to capture geographic trends of the oral diseases in the rural villagers. This research project, besides evaluating the impact of a comprehensiveprogram on the level of oral diseases and of oral health perception and behaviors/practices, will also assess the role of utilization of school staff and family to deliver and reinforce health-promoting behaviors. We anticipate that the lessons learned from this study will be relevant in other communities and countries in East Africa and beyond. Going Forward: As a result of our findings we will develop an educational outreach program for dental students, and their supervising faculty, from the School of Dental Medicine of the University of Nairobi. At present, the dental students and residents do not have the opportunity to work with rural impoverished communities. The goals of this project, beyond the experiential and care-provision, are also to expose dental students to the needs of these communities, and to become advocates for improving oral health services for those in Kenya in need. Thus, this program will also include leadership and advocating skills. Funding: Do a Little Foundation, San Francisco, California. Abstract #: 01NCD023