Dr. Mertz is a member of the research faculty at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), where she has worked since 1997. She has a joint appointment in the Department of Preventive and Restorative Dental Sciences in the School of Dentistry, and in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the School of Nursing. She is affiliated with the UCSF Center to Address Disparities in Children’s Oral Health. Dr. Mertz has researched, published, and lectured on a broad range of oral health professions workforce policy and analysis issues for the past 15 years, including supply and demand for providers, health care regulation, state and federal workforce policy, access to care, and evolving professional practice models. She has served on a number of oral health advisory and planning committees for organizations such as HRSA, the California HealthCare Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, the Pacific Center for Special Care, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Dr. Mertz recently served on the Institute of Medicine’s Oral Health Initiative committee that examined the dental delivery system and its challenges and made recommendations to HRSA for improving the oral health care delivery system. She is currently the principal investigator on a number of oral health workforce projects.
