Sharon M. Gordon, DDS, MPH, PhD
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Research
Dr. Sharon Gordon earned her dental degree from the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and completed a two-year general practice residency program at the Medical Center Hospital in San Antonio prior to joining the National Institutes of Health (NIH) as a postdoctoral fellow. While at NIH, she earned an MPH in epidemiology and PhD in clinical investigation, both from Johns Hopkins University. During her 13-year career at NIH, she conducted clinical research and treated medically complex patients at the NIH Clinical Center and directed the intramural and extramural educational programs at the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, NIH.
Dr. Gordon has had continuous research funding since leaving the NIH in 2004. Her research centers on the mechanisms of pain and analgesia, with an emphasis on clinical and population-based research for which she was honored with the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Pharmacology, Toxicology and Therapeutics group of the International Association for Dental Research award. Over the past several years, her work has evolved to the evidential basis of pain management highlighting diagnosis and treatment of acute and chronic facial pain, forming a basis for the continuing education she presents.
As a specialist in dental public health, her predoctoral teaching has focused on preparing primary care providers for community practice (both dental and medical students), with a recent emphasis on interprofessional education and interprofessional practice for which she has been recently awarded funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Health Resources and Services Administration. Her work has produced more than 150 publications to date and she has served as research mentor or advisor to numerous students, residents, postdoctoral fellows and junior faculty. Her passion for promoting research among dentists in training has been acknowledged by years of service as the faculty advisor to the National Student Research Group of the American Association for Dental Research and receiving the Dr. Patricia Sokolove Outstanding Mentor Award and the national Alan J. Davis Award from SCADA.