Myron Allukian Jr., MPH ‘67, will receive the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) oldest and most prestigious award on October 22 in Atlanta as part of the APHA annual meeting.

The 2001 Sedgwick Memorial Medal for Distinguished Service in Public Health will be given to Allukian at a special awards ceremony at 6:30 p.m. at the Atlanta Hilton Hotel in Atlanta, GA. The Sedgwick medal is named after William Sedgwick, prominent in the founding of HSPH, and was first awarded in 1929. The medal recognizes individuals who have a distinguished record of service to public health and who work to advance public health knowledge and practice.

Allukian is the first dentist to ever receive the award. Previous winners include Milton Rosenau, who also was prominent in the founding of HSPH, Julius Richmond, former US Surgeon General and professor of health policy emeritus at HSPH, and Philip Lee, former Assistant Secretary for Health at the US Department of Health and Human Services.

"I feel very humble to be presented with an award of this stature," said Allukian. "It is always nice when public health efforts are recognized."

Allukian, director of oral health at the Boston Public Health Commission, began practicing public health more than 30 years ago on the battlefields of Vietnam. One year out of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dentistry, Allukian joined the 3rd Marine Division and was sent to Danang, where he worked at a marine division field hospital.

There, during the relative quiet of the oppressively hot afternoons, he began to visit local orphanages to provide free dental care to the children in need.

Allukian and his team’s work resulted in the treatment of thousands of children at the orphanages, schools, refugee camps, and villages in the Danang area. One group in particular touched him deeply. At the end of his visits at a Buddhist orphanage, the children would sing a "thank you" song he remembers to this day.

"That kind of response just penetrates you from head to toe," said Allukian. "I knew after treating those kids that this was the kind of dentistry I wanted to do, the kind that helps large groups of underserved people. If someone had offered me $1 million instead, I wouldn’t have taken it."

When Allukian returned to the United States, he enrolled in a joint postdoctoral program of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine and HSPH, where his concentration was in health services and nutrition. (Allukian is a former president of the HSPH Alumni Council and is currently a regional representative.)

While still in school in 1968, Allukian presented testimony to the Massachusetts legislature showing that Bay State teens had six times the amount of tooth decay as Vietnamese teens. The shocking report made headlines. At the time, less than eight percent of Massachu-setts residents had access to fluoridated water, ranking the state 48th in the country. Allukian’s report helped change state law, giving a local Board of Health the authority to order fluoridation.

Allukian’s findings did more than change the state’s public health practice. They also changed his personal goals. Once devoted to the idea of working in developing countries, Allukian now felt the need to address significant public health problems in his home state of Massachusetts and in the US.

In 1970, he became the director of the Bureau of Community Dental Programs at the Boston Department of Health and Hospitals. He helped create a network of health center dental programs in underserved communities in Boston, which now have more than 100,000 patient visits each year.

In 1985, he created one of the first dental programs in the country to serve homeless populations.

When the AIDS epidemic was still nascent, Allukian became a strong advocate for the health care rights of HIV-infected people. After learning that some major dental clinics were reportedly refusing to treat HIV-infected people–and that as a result some HIV-infected people were lying about their conditions to receive service–Allukian drew local and national attention to the issue. As the incoming president of the American Association of Public Health Dentistry (AAPHD) in 1984, Allukian put together national policy recommendations about infectious diseases and dental care based on an AAPHD committee report. The AAPHD passed the recommendations as a resolution, which Allukian and his colleagues mailed to 25,000 leaders in dentistry, medicine and public health.

In response, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued infection control guidelines for dentists, and the dental profession became more responsive to the AIDS epidemic, said Allukian.

He also played a key role for the inclusion of Oral Health in the 1990 Preventive Objectives of the Nation and helped guide oral health objectives in Healthy People 2000 and Healthy People 2010.

In 1990, Allukian became president of APHA, the second dentist in the organization’s then 118-year history. Allukian worked closely with Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy to include oral health as part of health care reform proposals. Although the reforms largely failed to be enacted, they did heighten peoples’ awareness of oral health issues.

In 1995, working with the state legislature, he initiated and helped pass a bill that resulted in a Legislative Commission on Oral Health and the inclusion of oral health in the Children’s Medical Security Plan.

Since the Commission’s report last year, more than $25 million has been made available for oral health.

"Still a drop in the bucket," said Allukian.

Last month, Allukian implemented a new distance learning program for dentists, which brought about $500,000 in free dental services to Boston health centers.

When Allukian was presented with the Distinguished Faculty award from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine several years ago, he was cited for continuously working to raise the social conscience of the dental profession.

"I’ve had my job more than 30 years, and I still find it exciting," said Allukian. "I am a very lucky man to have chosen public health for a career."