Dr. Eric Wilson, a general dentist from Cole Camp, was honored with a 2016 Missouri Dental Association (MDA) Presidential Citation Award at the Association’s House of Delegates Nov. 4 in Jefferson City.
Wilson was recognized by MDA president Dr. Jody Vance for his commitment to the Missouri Emergency Response and Identification Team (MERIT), a statewide forensic dental team. MERIT was born out of the Great Flood of 1993, during which a small-town Missouri cemetery was washed away and required that scores of bodies be identified for re-interment.
A cadre of forensic dentists was called in to perform forensic identification, mostly from outside the state. To provide a local resource for such disasters in the future, a state dental forensic team was formed. Each year MERIT team members meet for an annual meeting at which continuing education is provided to give information and updates on forensic dentistry.
Wilson has been a Forensic Odontologist on the federal region VII DMORT (disaster mortuary operational response team) team since 1998, and as such has been deployed to New York after 9/11, to the American Airlines crash in Kirksville in 2003, to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, to Hurricane Ike in 2008, and to the tornado in Joplin in 2011. He will be installed as the President of the American Society of Forensic Odontology at its annual meeting next February in New Orleans.
Wilson received his Doctor of Dental Surgery degree from the University of Missouri-Kansas City in 1991 and established his private practice, Westwood Family Dental, in Cole Camp, where he has lived since. Wilson has a satellite practice in Sedalia. He enjoys the outdoors and traveling with his wife.
