A visiting professor from University College London has become the recipient of the Health Volunteers Overseas (HVO) second annual Golden Apple Award.

Dr Martin Hobdell is currently a visiting professor with the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University College London. He is a member of a number of dental associations including the British Dental Association and the British Association for the Study of Community Dentistry and has served on the HVO dentistry steering committee for the last seven years.

As part of its World Health Day observances, HVO created the award as a way of recognising the educational contributions of volunteers to sites abroad. Each volunteer honoured has demonstrated a strong commitment to HVO's educational mission by working on curriculum development, teacher training, didactic or clinical training, or the enhancement of educational resources.

Dr Hobdell was nominated in recognition of his leadership in creating and implementing graduate level certificate and masters training programmes in dental public health at the University of Health Sciences in Cambodia and at the Faculty for Odonto-Stomatology in Vietnam. He is an internationally known expert in oral health and developed, in consultation with local faculty, a dental public health curriculum to be taught over a two-year period, mainly by visiting faculty.

A private, non-profit membership organisation, HVO was founded in 1986 to improve global health through education. It designs and implements clinical education programmes in child health, primary care, trauma and rehabilitation, essential surgical care, oral health, infectious disease, nursing education, burn management and wound care. In more than 25 resource-poor nations, volunteers train, mentor and provide critical professional support to health care providers for the neediest populations in the most difficult of circumstances.