Dr Aalia Karamat, BDS, MSc, MPhil, PhD

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Dr Aalia Karamat is a postdoc research associate at Queen Mary University of London, in Dental Public Health and Primary Care, where she is working on mixed methods project using an implementation science approach, evaluating GDPs' willingness to engage in research and identifying contextual barriers and facilitators of implementing periodontology treatment guidelines in Primary Dental care. She is enthusiastic about health services research to generate new insights into the structure, processes, and impacts of health services on individuals and populations. She is a dental graduate with a keen interest in both research and public health. She has an MSc in Oral Medicine from University College London, MSc in Dental Public Health and PGDip in Healthcare Research Methods from Queen Mary University of London, MPhil in Orofacial pain from King's College London and a PhD in Dental Public Health from the University of Glasgow. Her PhD project was a mixed-methods study that employed the Implementation Science approach to assess potential barriers and facilitators of systematically implementing community linking within the dental primary care setting. This is to tailor implementation strategies, make necessary adaptations, and explain outcomes.  She has managed large, linked datasets, performed secondary analysis, conducted process evaluation of a complex intervention, developed, conducted and analysed a survey. She also has experience collecting and analysing data through questionnaires for patient outcomes.

In her job at the University of Cambridge (first postdoc), she worked on Applied Research Collaboration (ARC) and School of Public Health Research (SPHR) projects to identify evidence-based mechanisms for improving data quality and how these can be implemented to help address health inequalities. High-quality data is an indispensable resource for policy planning and leads to better policies that help improve the quality of people’s lives and support patient care, clinical governance, service delivery planning, and service evaluation. Furthermore, she developed case studies for knowledge dissemination of the project https://www.cph.cam.ac.uk/resources/briefs.

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Centre: Dental Public Health and Primary Care

 

Research

Research Interests:

PhD project https://theses.gla.ac.uk/83535/4/2023KaramatPhD.pdf

Her PhD project employed the Implementation Science approach. She conducted a process evaluation of the Childsmile programme’s Dental Health Support Workers component to optimise and improve services delivered by Dental Health Support Workers. It focused on early prevention strategies to support young children's families facing social issues at home, utilising health visitors’ pathways and primary dental settings to reduce inequalities. The Logic model guided a longitudinal process to assess whether the program was delivered as intended, check assumptions underpinning the programme theory, and set out key programme component activities. Additionally, an acceptability and feasibility study was conducted using a mixed-method approach. To determine whether community linking is feasible within the dental setting and acceptable to the dental health support workers who would be undertaking the task. What are their views on extending services to assist families with social issues, and what do they perceive as the facilitators and barriers? The CFIR framework for implementation research guided the study design.

Aalia is also interested in the impacts of dental pain on individuals and people around them and its management, viewing pain as a public health issue. Her MPhil project focused on orofacial pain, its psychological functioning, and the complexity of the needs of such patients. It demands multidisciplinary management, and the project recommendations indicated that orofacial pain patients have complex needs requiring multidisciplinary input from Neurology, Psychiatry, and Oral Surgeons to ensure their well-being. Link to thesis https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/studentTheses/multidisciplinary-management-and-psychological-functioning-in-oro 

Publications

• Psychologic Impact of Chronic Orofacial Pain: A Critical Review; Literature Review

May 2022Journal of Oral & Facial Pain and Headache, Authors: Aalia Karamat, Jared G Smith, Lydia Melek, Tara Renton

• The differential impact of neuropathic, musculoskeletal and neurovascular orofacial pain on psychosocial function, June 2020, Journal of Oral Pathology and Medicine, Authors; Jared G Smith, Aalia Karamat, Lydia Melek, Tara Renton

 

• Catastrophising, pain self‐efficacy and acceptance in patients with Burning Mouth Syndrome, December 2020 Journal of Oral Rehabilitation, Authors; Pav Chana, Jared G Smith, Aalia Karamat, Tara Renton

 

• Comparison of the Neuropathic Pain Symptoms and Psychosocial Impacts of Trigeminal Neuralgia and Painful Posttraumatic Trigeminal Neuropathy, February 2019 Journal of Oral & Facial Pain and Headache, Lydia Melek, Jared G Smith, Aalia Karamat, Tara Renton

 

• Changing face of orofacial pain: The diagnostic impact of working with Neurology on an orofacial pain clinic. December 2018, International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery. Aalia Karamat, Jared G Smith, Giorgio Lambru, Tara Renton