Category Archives: Blog Posts

When the Forsyth Dental Infirmary for Children first opened its doors, it was poised to tackle one of the most pressing public health challenges in the Boston area and throughout New England. Thousands of children living in poverty suffered from serious dental problems but had no access to dental care. The Institute sought to address…

Each year, a team from the Forsyth Institute participates in the Rodman Ride for Kids, riding 25 or 50 miles to raise money for our kid-focused initiatives. The official ride could not be held this year due to COVID-19. However, Team Forsyth would not be stopped. This year, we gathered for a socially-distanced outdoor stationary…

By Batbileg Bor, Assistant Member of the Staff Darwin gave us the concept of “tree of life.” Woese resolved life into three branches (Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryota). But could the microscopic world hide life so foreign that it does not fit into any of these branches? Closest yet to this idea is the newly added…

The Forsyth Institute’s in-house dental clinic, Forsyth Faculty Associates, is grounded in more than a century of experience in oral health research and care. Our clinicians are not just dental professionals but world-class professors and researchers, and many of them hold joint appointments at the Harvard School for Dental Medicine. In light of the COVID-19…

The Forsyth Institute’s ForsythKids program was recently awarded a $100,000 grant from the Cummings Foundation to continue providing the Massachusetts community with high quality oral health education and care. ForsythKids will use the funds to provide oral health outreach and education, patient advocate services, restorative and preventative dental care to thousands of patients throughout Massachusetts.…

Join us for a live virtual lecture and discussion on May 26: Saliva and COVID-19 Testing in Clinical Dental Practice. Download event poster Course description: Oral healthcare professionals work with saliva in daily practice so understanding the risks of exposure to contaminated saliva and aerosols during the dental care is critical. Therefore, oral healthcare professionals…

In celebration of National Children’s Dental Health Month, the ForsythKids team gave out water bottles to a group of students to promote drinking from the tap. Most tap water contains fluoride, which has been proven to decrease cavities in both children and adults. 

Could a child’s teeth predict future mental health risk? In a new study, researchers at Forsyth, Massachusetts General Hospital, and UC San Francisco propose using teeth as biomarkers for childhood trauma. “The study, published in Biological Psychiatry, describes how crucial moments in a child’s history are often recorded in their teeth. As baby teeth form before birth, and…

Bacteria and other microbes in the human mouth can help researchers understand how our oral microbiomes affect our overall health. Forsyth researchers Floyd Dewhirst and Gary Borisy and their colleague Jessica Mark Welch of the Marine Biological Laboratory were featured recently in Knowable Magazine and Smithsonian explaining the significance of their work with the oral microbiome.  Read the…

The Forsyth Institute Student Scholars Summer Internship Program was featured today in the Boston Globe. This highly competitive program exposes Boston-area high school students to the world of scientific research. This summer, eight interns selected from a pool of more than 200 applicants worked side-by-side with Forsyth scientists in their labs. Three of those students—Angel Muthemba, Cheyenne Stringfellow,…