In 2004, the first international bi-annual dental-statistical meeting ‘Methodological Issues in Oral Health Research’, was organised in Leuven (Belgium) as a result of a longstanding collaboration between Dominique Declerck and Emmanuel Lesaffre both appointed at KU Leuven (Belgium), with the aim to improve the collaboration between oral health researchers, epidemiologists and statisticians.

The meeting was quite successful with about 100 participants (60% oral health researchers). The main topic of the first meeting was Follow-up studies. Selected (peer-reviewed) publications from this meeting were published in a special issue of Statistical Methods in Medical Research (2005).