AAOF Case Western Bolton Brush Growth Study Overview

The Case Western Bolton Brush Study

Curator: Mark G. Hans DDS, MSD

Institution: Bolton Brush Growth Study Center, Case Western University

The Bolton-Brush Growth Study Center at Case Western Reserve University houses the largest and most complete human craniofacial growth study in the world, the Broadbent-Bolton Growth Study and the largest longitudinal growth study, the Brush Inquiry. Although the collection was well funded by the Bolton family from 1930 until the death of B. Holly Broadbent Sr. in 1977, other funding opportunities were limited. In 1999, B. Holly Broadbent Jr. was awarded the GAC International Corporate Center Award from the AAOF to develop an index to the collection and to preserve some of the longest longitudinal records in digital format. The index to the collection is available at no cost to craniofacial researchers throughout the world at http://dental.case.edu/bolton-brush/collection/data.fp7 . During the 1999-2001 funding period access to the digital collection was provided to all interested researchers at no charge. With 4309 subjects enrolled the radiographs and models take up about 600 square feet of storage space on the third floor of the Bolton Dental Building. The entire Center measures about 2000 square feet and provides research and office space for seven full time faculty members.

Because of the sheer size of the collection and the lack of funding support since 2001 the collection has become fragmented. No records have left the center but many of them have found their way into file cabinets and file folders associated with individual research projects. Most of these projects were conducted by graduate students who had little or no funding and even less time at the end of their study to replace the radiographs they used back into their original folders. This has fragmented the collection making it difficult to find radiographs quickly and efficiently. Fortunately, the digital collection has been copied and we have two copies of each radiograph within the dental school, one in the center and a backup in the Department of Orthodontics. A third copy is kept off site. The index to the collection is likewise preserved both online and offsite.