Karen Peres is a dentist with two master's degrees, one in Paediatric Dentistry and another in Public Health. She completed her PhD in Epidemiology at the University of Sao Paulo in 2002 after spending one year at University College London, UK. Karen was a professor in Epidemiology in Brazil until 2012, when she moved to Australia. She was a researcher at the Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health (ARCPOH), University of Adelaide, Australia, until 2018, where she was the Director of The Dental Practice Education Research Unit (DPERU). In September 2018, Karen was appointed as Associate Professor of Dentistry, School of Dentistry and Oral Health, Griffith University, Australia. Karen joined the National Dental Research Institute Singapore, National Dental Care Centre Singapore, as a Principal Investigator and Associate Professor at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, in May 2020.
Karen is an internationally recognized researcher in the field of Child Oral Health and Oral Epidemiology and spent seven years as a member of the Research Advisory Committee of the Australian Dental Research Foundation and South Pacific Child Oral Health taskforce.
Her research areas of interest include child oral health epidemiology, inequalities in general and oral health, life course epidemiology, oral health surveillance, the relationship between oral health and general health, and the assessment of the effectiveness of oral health programs for children. Karen has been involved in international collaborative work on breastfeeding effects on several children's health outcomes. Their findings were worldwide spread and resulted in a special issue of The Lancet published in 2016 (DOI: 10.1016 / S0140-6736). She has supervised more than 30 Masters and PhD students, authored fourteen book chapters and more than 150 peer-reviewed papers. Her work has received more than 11000 citations, an H index of 62. She was a CI of an NHMRC partnership grant of the National Adult Oral Health in Australia. She is one of the coordinators of oral health studies nested in the internationally known Pelotas, Brazil birth cohort studies. She is currently coordinating the International Consortium of Oral Health Birth Cohort Studies project, sponsored by the Borrow Foundation, UK.
Professional Appointments and Committee Memberships:
Clinical: São Paulo Health Authority, Brazil, Paediatric dentist -01/1986-03/1995
Clinical: Private dental office, Brazil, Paediatric dentist-3/1995-7/2005
Academic: South of Santa Catarina University, Brazil: Lecture-2001-2004
Academic: West of Santa Catarina University, Brazil: Lecture- 2003-2006
Academic: Planalto Catarinense University, Brazil: Lecture-2006-2006
Academic: Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil: Adjunct professor-7/2006-10/2012
Academic: University of Adelaide, Adelaide Dental School, Australia-Associate Professor-12/2012-07/2012
Academic: School of Dentistry and Oral Health, Griffith University, Australia-Associate Professor-9/2018-04/2020
Leadership positions / roles in Education
- Nutritional Research Group of the International Association for Dental Research – Vice- President
- Brazilian Association of Public Health -Member
- International Epidemiological Association – IEA- member
- The Dental Practice Education Research Unit (DPERU)- University of Adelaide, Australia -Director
- Research Advisory Committee of the Australian Dental Research Foundation- member
- South Pacific Child Oral Health taskforce- member
Selected Publications
1- Peres KG, Cascaes AM, Peres MA, Demarco FF, Santos IS, Matijasevich A, Barros AJ. Exclusive Breastfeeding and Risk of Dental Malocclusion. Pediatrics. 2015 Jul;136(1):e60-7.
2- Victora CG, Bahl R, Barros AJ, França GV, Horton S, Krasevec J, Murch S, Sankar MJ, Walker N, Rollins NC; et el. Lancet Breastfeeding Series Group. Breastfeeding in the 21st century: epidemiology, mechanisms, and lifelong effect. Lancet. 2016 Jan 30;387(10017):475-90 FI: 70.321
3- Peres KG, Nascimento GG, Peres MA, Mittinty MN, Demarco FF, Santos IS, Matijasevich A, Barros AJD. Impact of Prolonged Breastfeeding on Dental Caries: A Population-Based Birth Cohort Study. Pediatrics. 2017 Jul;140(1):e20162943. IF: 5.515
4- Peres KG, Chaffee BW, Feldens CA, Flores-Mir C, Moynihan P, Rugg-Gunn A. Breastfeeding and Oral Health: Evidence and Methodological Challenges. Journal of Dental Research. 2018 97(3):251-258. IF: 5.380.
5- Collares K, Opdam NJ, Peres KG, Peres MA, Horta BL, Demarco FF, Correa MB, Higher experience of caries and lower income trajectory influence the quality of restorations: A multilevel analysis in a birth cohort. Journal of Dentistry 2018; 68:79-84. IF: 3.770.
6- Schuch HS, Peres KG, Demarco FF, Horta BL, Gigante DP, Peres MA, Do LG . Effect of life course family income trajectories on periodontitis: birth cohort study. Journal of Clinical Periodontology 2018; 45: 394-403. IF: 4.046.
7- Ha DH, Spencer AJ, Peres KG, Rugg-Gunn AJ, Scott JA, Do LG . Fluoridated Water Modifies the Effect of Breastfeeding on Dental Caries. J Dent Res. 2019 Jul;98(7):755-762. IF: 5.380
8- Schuch HS, Nascimento GG, Peres KG, Mittinty MN, Demarco FF, Correa MB, Gigante DP, Horta BL, Peres MA, Do LG. The Controlled Direct Effect of Early-Life Socioeconomic Position on Periodontitis in a Birth Cohort. Am J Epidemiol. 2019 Jun 1;188(6):1101-1108. IF:4.897
9- Nascimento GG, Gastal MT, Leite FRM, Quevedo LA, Peres KG, Peres MA, Horta BL, Barros FC, Demarco FF. Is there an association between depression and periodontitis? A birth cohort study. Journal of Clinical Periodontology 2019;46(1):31-39. IF: 4.046.
10- Cumerlato CBDF, Demarco FF, Barros AJD, Peres MA, Peres KG, Morales Cascaes A, de Camargo MBJ, da Silva Dos Santos I, Matijasevich A, Corrêa MB. Reasons for direct restoration failure from childhood to adolescence: A birth cohort study. J Dent. 2019 Oct; 89:103183. IF:3.77
11- Peres KG, Thomson WM, Chaffee BW, Peres MA, Birungi N, Do LG, Feldens CA, Fontana M, Marshall TA, Pitiphat W, Seow WK, Wagner Y, Wong HM, Rugg-Gunn AJ. Oral Health Birth Cohort Studies: Achievements, Challenges, and Potential. J Dent Res. IF:5.380
12- Nascimento GG, Seerig LM, Schuch HS, Horta BL, Peres KG, Peres MA, Corrêa MB, Demarco FF. Income at birth and tooth loss due to dental caries in adulthood: The 1982 Pelotas birth cohort. Oral Dis. 2020 Apr 29. IF: 2.625
13- Schuch HS, Dantas RVF, Seerig LM, Santos IS, Matijasevich A, Barros AJD, Peres KG, Peres MA, Demarco FF. Socioeconomic inequalities explain the association between source of drinking water and dental caries in primary dentition. .J Dent. 2021 Jan 16:103584. IF: 3.77
14- Ahmed KE, Peres KG, Peres MA, Evans JL, Quaranta A, Burrow MF. Operators matter - An assessment of the expectations, perceptions, and performance of dentists, postgraduate students, and dental prosthetist students using intraoral scanning. J Dent. 2020 Dec 29; 105:103572. IF:3.77
15- Cohorts Consortium of Latin America and the Caribbean (CC-LAC). The Cohorts Co IF: Consortium of Latin America and the Caribbean (CC-LAC). Int J Epidemiol. 2020 Oct 1;49(5):1437-1437g IF:7.707
16- NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC). Worldwide trends in hypertension prevalence and progress in treatment and control from 1990 to 2019: a pooled analysis of 1201 population-representative studies with 104 million participants. Lancet. 2021 Aug 24:S0140-6736(21)01330-1. IF: 70.321
17- Souza ML, Nascimento GG, Chica DAG, Peres KG, Peres MA.J A counterfactual approach on the effect of metabolic syndrome on tooth loss: A population-based study. J. Periodontol. 2021 Aug 13. doi: 10.1002/JPER.21-0175. Impact factor: 3.742