Nashville dentist to be made president of the NDA
A Nashville dentist will be officially named as the president of the National Dental Association at a special ceremony on Saturday 5 December 2009.
Dr Walter R Owens will be the 86th president of the association (NDA), which is the voice of ethnic minority dental concerns in America.
He will be announced as president of the 96-year-old-association at a special ceremony in Loews Vanderbilt Plaza Hotel in Nashville.
The NDA aims to raise awareness about dental issues in minority communities and to educate groups and enhance financial opportunities.
For more than 25 years, Dr Owens, born and raised in Nashville, treated thousands of patients in Tennessee before retiring in 2005. He now works as senior development officer at Meharry Medical College’s School of Dentistry.
As part of the special ceremony Dr Owens was joined by Dr Ray Gist, the first African-American president of the American Dental Association (ADA), in a discussion on oral health.
This is the first time that African-Americans have headed the US’s two largest dental associations.
Dr Owens said that he felt honored to serve of the US’s largest dental health organizations at such a important time in the country’s healthcare history and added he planned to further the good work that the NDA does with ethnic minority groups.
A graduate of Tennessee State University and the Howard University College of Dentistry, Dr Owen is also an US Army veteran.
He is member of the TennCare dental advisory committee and the Pan-Tennessee Dental Association liaison to the Tennessee Board of Dentistry.
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