Professor Wagner Marcenes: Founder

Wagner Marcenes is a Professor in Oral Epidemiology, University of London, a world-leading in his field. Marcenes completed his PhD in Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London in 1991 and was appointed lecturer in oral epidemiology. In 2002, he was appointed Professor of Oral Epidemiology by the University of London, the first such professor in the UK. Marcenes currently works as an independent consultant in Health Policies and has close links with the World Health Organisation having carried out work for this organisation in several occasions. 

His teaching and research programme have concentrated on health inequities. Marcenes has published more than 250 scientific papers, which were cited more than 60,000 times. He has been the most cited researcher in Dentistry since 2015 (ResearchGate (Maio/2021). Marcenes contributed to 8 books and an uncountable number of population health reports. He has supervised over 50 post‐graduate students representing all continents and cultures.

Marcenes has received many awards. In 2008, he received IADR/AADR William J. Gies Award for best Clinical Research. In 2012, he was awarded a Royal College of Surgeons Fellowship for his contribution to Oral Health in the UK. In 2016, he received the prestigious IADR Distinguished Scientist Award in Global Oral Health Research. In 2018, he won the first price SUNSTAR Foundation Perio Link Award for best research on the link between oral and general health for a project named the Economic Burden of Oral Diseases study. He was also awarded the third price SUNSTAR Foundation Perio Link Award for best research on the link between oral and general health (Bronze medal) for another project named the Global Burden of Diseases study. In 2018, he received the IADR/AADR William J. Gies Award for best Clinical Research for the second time.

Marcenes was the Director of the Graduate School, Institute of Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London for a decade. Marcenes was also Director of Research at Barts Health NHS Trust (Oral Health) and Leader Researcher of the Division of Patient and Population Health at Queen Mary University of London (Oral Health). 

Marcenes is a man of vision. In 1993 (published 1995) with colleagues he successfully tested a research methodology to collect data in the internet and an algorism to process and analyse the data obtained. In this scientific article published in 1992 he proposed that internet would be a valuable research tool in the future. 

Marcenes' research has established a new paradigm to elucidate oral health inequalities from the social environment, through psychosocial factors, exploring behavioural and biological pathways to oral health. The main focus of his research has been on the interaction of upstream (i.e.: environmental) and downstream (i.e.: behavioural and biological) factors. Marcenes has also significantly contributed to the establishment of the life course theory to explain oral health inequalities.

Currently, Marcenes works as a Consultant in Population Health Policies and contribute as expert senior oral health researcher within the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study. The GBD study is the first major effort to carry out a complete systematic assessment of published and unpublished data on 316 diseases and injuries, and to produce comprehensive and comparable estimates of the burden of diseases, injuries and risk factors yearly in nearly 200 countries.

Marcenes is the founder of the Affordable Health Initiative CIO, which advocates and implements a comprehensive whole-school community Health Promoting School model, which incorporates the principles of the Ottawa Charter (http://www.who.int/healthpromotion/conferences/previous/ottawa/en/index4.html) and delivers a sustainable, scalable and simple operational model for the World Health Organisations (WHO) Health Promoting School ( http://www.who.int/school_youth_health/gshi/hps/en/) initiative. AHI was designed based on his applicable research portfolio on health inequities to help children from low-income communities to have the means to fulfil their potential.