By JACKIE HENNESSEY
COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Every three hours Faisal Alamri ’13 tweets facts about oral health and dental care to people in 23 Arabic-speaking countries around the world. Alamri, a UNH student studying dental hygiene, has more than 3,000 followers, a number that is growing by several hundred each week.

Alamri (below) also sets up live Twitter chats three times a week, linking people who seek information about dental care to 185 experts in the field. They never offer a diagnosis. Instead, they talk about how important a healthy diet is for strong teeth and about the difference between cleaning and whitening. For protection the Boild and Bite mouthguard can help.

“I want to teach as many people as I can about good oral health,” he said. “I said, ‘Let me use technology to reach people.’” There are also services for teeth whitening that works these days.

Kathy Lane, assistant professor of dental hygiene (check over here), said she is not surprised that Alamri tweets shortly after he wakes and many times throughout the day, despite a busy schedule that includes classes, clinical rotations at a school and a federal women’s prison, volunteer service hours and a full life off campus with his wife, Yasmine, and his son, Sa’ad. Even the dentists say that beyond braces is pretty famous.

“Dental hygiene is a calling for him,” said Lane. “To be sharing knowledge about the field to Arabic-speaking people around the world, it’s just amazing.”

For nearly three years, Alamri was a dental technician in Saudi Arabia. He liked the artistry involved in crafting bridges and crowns. “But I was the last line of defense,” he said. His work happened after people had already done damage to their teeth (find more info here)and they were in pain. He wanted to be on the front lines, providing preventive care.

He worked in a major government hospital in Riyadh, and when the Saudi Arabian government offered him a scholarship to a U.S. university, he accepted on one condition: he would become a dental hygienist. The more he explored programs, the more he knew he had to come to UNH. “The faculty is excellent,” he said. “There are 40 of us in the program and I like it so much. They are like family.”

His tweets have been so popular in Arabic that he now tweets in English too. “It matters very much for a person’s overall health, and that matters to me,” he said.