Four years' experience with a fellowship program for dental quality studies

A fellowship program of small grants to support students' research has been conducted for several years as a means of attracting beginning investigators to the field of dental quality assurance. Experience with the program yielded several observations that may be useful in similar endeavors. Recruitment of research manpower to a new problem area is possible in a relatively short period of time, and at modest cost when the targeted population is students in training institutions, and when the grants program uses volunteers, has frequent cycles, provides applicants with rapid turn-around, and takes advantage of the extensive communication network available to dentistry. A general small grants program with these features would benefit dental research.