CDM alumna Dr. Jessica Lee, DDS, MPH, PhD, becomes CEO of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry
When Jessica Y. Lee, DDS, MPH, PhD, was choosing a dental school, Columbia offered something unusual: the opportunity to pursue a DDS and MPH together. “They’re pioneers in that,” Lee said. The opportunity drew her across the country from Washington state and set her on a path that would bring dentistry and public health together throughout her career. Looking back, Lee said, “It was such the perfect place for me to be.”
Lee credits CDM’s faculty and residents with introducing her to what she described as frontline pediatric dentistry. “That combination of public health and pediatric dentistry is just such a nice fit to really take care of underserved children,” she said.
Outside the classroom, Washington Heights made the need for care impossible to miss. “People are in such need of dental care, and they’re right outside your door,” Lee said. CDM’s community and school-based programs brought her closer to those needs and pushed her to think beyond earning her degree. “Yes, I want to be a dentist. Yes, I want my degree, but can I have an impact while I’m doing this?”
That drive soon took her from Washington Heights to Washington, D.C., where she spent six weeks between her first and second years working at the American Dental Association’s office through her involvement with the American Student Dental Association. The hands-on advocacy experience opened another possibility for her career. “That’s when I really thought this is something I’d love to combine. It really just sparked my interest,” she said.
Children’s access to care soon became a central question for Lee. Why were children experiencing pain and missing school because of a preventable disease like dental caries? “Where’s a break in the system?” she remembered asking. At the University of North Carolina (UNC), she pursued that question through a PhD in health policy. Her first NIH grant examined health disparities among children and the social factors and determinants that contribute to them.
Lee also took on those issues through advocacy. During federal health care reform, she helped ensure that children’s oral health was included as an essential health benefit, while her Medicaid work addressed barriers ranging from reimbursement for dentists to helping families enroll and keep their children covered. That record, coupled with nearly three decades of involvement with AAPD, positioned Lee for a new chapter in her career. After serving on committees and eventually as AAPD president from 2020 to 2021, she was named the organization’s next CEO in January 2026 and assumed the role on June 1.
As CEO of AAPD, Lee is carrying forward the organization’s longstanding focus on putting children first. She describes doing what is right for the child as its “North Star,” particularly because children do not always have a voice or a seat at the table. Her priorities include advocating for children’s oral health, preventing oral disease so children can grow up with healthy smiles and supporting pediatric dentists with clinical guidelines and high-quality continuing education. For Lee, those efforts have implications beyond oral health, from helping children do well in school to protecting their health as they grow. “We need people to step up and speak up for the child. Someone has to, right?” she said.
For Lee, many of the threads that have come together in her career began at CDM. “I felt like CDM supported me through my passions,” she said. At a time when bringing together children’s health and public health was still unusual, she found faculty and a culture that encouraged her to pursue both, in the classroom and in the surrounding community. “Probably the best decision I ever made was to go to Columbia,” she said.