DPOH Faculty & Staff

Amy Martin, DrPH, MSPH

Professor and Director for the DPOH at the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina. She is a Senior Investigator and is adjunct faculty in the department of HSPM in the Arnold School of Public Health, University of South Carolina. Dr. Martin’s health policy research foci are safety net populations, access to care, and oral health with an emphasis on rural Health care and public health systems. Dr. Martin holds Doctor and Master of Science in Public Health degrees. She is active in national health policy through various rural and safety-net serving organizations such as: NRHA and MSDA

Amy Martin CV

Joni D. Nelson, Ph.D., MS

Dr. Joni Dunmyer Nelson, native of Ravenel, South Carolina, is an Assistant Professor and Deputy Director in the Division of Population Oral Health at the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine and also serves in a dual appointment role in the Department of Public Health Sciences, College of Medicine. As a Health Promotion, Education, and Behavioral specialist her research foci are qualitative research evaluation, social determinants of health equity, quality improvement science, and collaborative care workforce models to reduce rural oral health inequities, in support of an interprofessional approach to improve population health outcomes. She is the program director for the Dental Safety Net Certificate Program and teaches a public health research methods course. She was appointed as a 2017 National Rural Health Association Fellow and serves as the National State Representative of South Carolina for DentaQuest Foundation’s Oral Health 2020 Network, an initiative to improve oral health for all. Dr. Nelson is a graduate of the Arnold School of Public Health in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior from the University of South Carolina and received a Master’s in Biomedical Sciences from the Medical University of South Carolina. 

Abigail Kelly, MS

Abby Kelly is a Research Instructor in the Division of Population Oral Health at the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine.  She assists with developing protocols, providing sample size estimates, and performing statistical analyses.  She received her Masters of Science degree in Statistics from the University of South Carolina.

Amah Riley, BA, RDH

Amah Riley is a Technical Assistance Coach in the Division of Population Oral Health at the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine.  She provides guidance to school-based oral health programs funded through the SBOHI grant.  Mrs. Riley received her Associates Degree in Allied Health and is a Registered Dental Hygienist.  She practiced in private dental offices before finding a path in public health.  She became the Director of Mobile Health Services at the Federally Qualified Health Center, CareSouth Carolina.  Here she helped to design a program to deliver medical and oral health services using mobile and portable equipment to schoolchildren.  Mrs. Riley has also served as the South Carolina Provider Representative for DentaQuest, the third-party payer for Medicaid.  She has since received her Bachelors of Arts in Biology from Coker College and is currently working on her Masters in Public Health at A.T. Still University.