For the second Find-Your-Role-Model Session of 2021 (61st overall), we invited Dr. Shiho Kino, an alumna of the Department of Oral Health Care Sciences at TMDU, who is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Social Epidemiology, Graduate School of Medicine and School of Public Health, Kyoto University.

Since Dr. Kino was interested in both oral health and social welfare, she chose to study in the Department of Oral Health Care Sciences at TMDU where she could focus on preventive medicine, an area where both of her interests could be applied. Then, in the master’s program she studied how socioeconomical factors affect health inequality and people’s health. During her master’s studies she became interested in roles the national government could play to reduce these health disparities and decided to continue her studies at a doctoral level.

When Dr. Kino was a student at Juntendo University, she was bothered about where to continue her research after graduation. At that time, she prioritized not the place but the content of the courses offered. Finally, she chose to go to Europe (UK) where the government actively takes measures to reduce health disparities.

After that, she told us that there are two different ways to correct health disparities, an equality based path or an equity based one. To analyze the effectiveness of the latter, she studied as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Harvard University several years after Obama Care was introduced. Through her research, she realized that health risk management for the underprivileged is especially important. Currently, she is conducting research on the ways society can provide support to Japanese recipients of welfare to effectively reduce health disparities.

Based on her research and studies regarding oral health, social welfare and public health, her perspectives have been broadened, thereby enabling her to analyze problems critically and create new research topics. Although the number of Japanese students who go on to foreign graduate schools is still small, she pointed out that it is very important to understand the level of overseas studies early in one’s career.

She kindly advised us to improve our language skills during our university student days. She also recommended that we should actively seek advice from graduate students, faculty and international students regarding our career choices.

Dr. Kino did not initially plan on becoming a researcher or studying internationally. Instead, she made her decisions based on what she really wanted to do at the moment and succeeded in working as a researcher. She has kept very active and feels no regrets about her decisions so far. We were really inspired by her message and it was a truly meaningful session!