It’s official! UCSF President Mark Yudof signed the approval for the Masters of Science in Dental Hygiene at UCSF. This is truly a milestone for our profession. Peggy Walsh has been working tirelessly with the full support and commitment of Dean Featherstone to get this program approved. If all goes as planned, the first class will be accepted in June of 2011. It is a one year program.
Linda Belaus, Maureen Titus, Ellen Standley, Teri Emry, Toni Adams and Debra Horlick were a the DHCC (Dental Hygiene Committee of California meeting held in Sacramento. The meeting was for the board to create a mission statement a vision statement and to set up the strategic plan. Well, that's really too much to try to accomplish in one day, but the Mission and Vision statements are as follows:
The Mission Statement: Promote and ensure the highest quality of oral health care for all Californians.
The VisionStatement: Optimal oral health for all Californians.
Please be aware that this has not been finalized, the info will be on the DHCC web site for public input/commentary.
The goals have been outlined and now need to be refined.
Its very impressing to see the hard work everyone has done and the meticulous manner in which they approach the task.
•There was discussion about implementing fingerprinting for the 14,000 RDH's who have not been fingerprinted.
• There is discussion that the licensing fees will have to go up. As of now there is a cap of $80 for licensing period. This cap has been in place for 20 years.
• The state no longer can afford to partially fund the fees for RDH's taking their boards.
• There were unexpected expenses incurred when the Ethics Written Exam was breached.
• The committee does not seem to have enough funding for anticipated training for the board members as 1/2 of them are politically inexperienced resulting in a higher level of training needed for task delegation.
Other issues include:
1- the fact that the DHCC ability to promote legislation is low
2- allowance of RDA's to probe intrudes on the RDH scope of practice
The above is just a small sketch of what was discussed. Stay tuned, I will keep you updated as often as I can. There seems to be an urgency to get all this done before the elections.
Worlds most powerful man speaks out about importance of oral health and the relationsip to total health!
PEW REPORT ON DENTAL CARE (PEW is a charitable trust set up by the Sun Oil Company founder Joseph N. Pew and his wife, Mary Anderson Pew). Their work provides a constructive framework by permitting all sides to base their cases on a common set of facts. His goal is to 'tell the truth and trust the people". His approach is that the power of knowledge solves some of today's most challenging problems for the public good in a fact-based and nonpartisan way. This organization also played a key role in addressing the problem of global climate change, the project accumulated incontrovertible evidence on this evolving environmental phenomenon. The scientific data and other peer-reviewed studies were so convincing that in 2005 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and 10 of its foreign counterparts issued a joint statement that essentially ended the debate on whether climate change was occurring.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 3590, the health care overhaul bill passed by the Senate in December, thus ushering in a new era of heath care delivery in the United States. The 219-212 vote closely followed party lines with only Democrats voting in favor of the measure. The bill now awaits President Obama's signature in order to become law. H.R. 3590 contains a number of oral health provisions that will have a significant impact on the oral health care delivery system and the dental hygiene profession. As the leading resource for information about your profession, ADHA offers this update on health reform as part of the series of health reform e-mails that have been sent since August.
The House vote brings closure to more than a year of national debate about whether or not to fundamentally overhaul the national health care system. The new law will extend health care coverage to tens of millions of Americans. While much media attention has been focused on the broad medical provisions contained in H.R. 3590, little has been reported about the significant oral health provisions included in the bill. The following offers an overview of some of the key oral health provisions:
How Dental Care Will Be Changed by Healthcare Reform
Health reform will offer major changes in the arena of dental care; the bill that has been offered by the United States Congress for healthcare reform will have a lasting effect on the field of dentistry and the type of dental care that people receive.
There promises to be a huge expansion of coverage for individuals in need of dental care once health reform is initiated. The healthcare reform bill looks very promising for people who have long awaited adequate coverage for their dental needs.
Children will get greater dental care because the health reform options are seeking to cover all children in the United States today. Funding will possibly be offered for professionals within the industry seeking to further their education in the field of dentistry too; this means more qualified dentists to treat more individuals who receive coverage via the healthcare reform bill.
At 7am on December 24th, the Senate passed H.R. 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The passage of the legislation marks another hurdle in the effort to pass sweeping health reform legislation in Congress. The House passed its health reform bill in November and now Senate and House leadership will reconcile the differences between the two pieces of legislation, setting the stage for final passage of a health reform bill.
The American Dental Hygienists’ Association (ADHA) is committed to keeping the dental hygiene community informed on health reform matters that impact the profession. Both the House and Senate bills contain significant oral health provisions that are not often mentioned in media coverage of health reform.
ADHA respects that there are many opinions on health reform within the dental hygiene community. This update is not intended to sway recipients in one direction or the other on the issue, but is offered as a means to update dental hygiene professionals about the oral health provisions contained in the Senate bill (H.R. 3590) and the House bill (H.R. 3962).
ADA Launches Community Dental Health Coordinator Pilot Program at Temple University
CHICAGO, Nov. 24, 2009-The American Dental Association (ADA) has signed an agreement with Temple University to train new dental team members as part of a pilot program to improve the oral health in underserved communities. The Community Dental Health Coordinator (CDHC) is a member of the dental health team who works in communities where residents have limited access to dental care to improve their oral health.
The CDHC provides a limited range of preventive dental care services-including screenings and fluoride treatments. However, of greater importance to these communities, the CDHC will help patients navigate the health system and access care by a dentist or an appropriate clinic and engage in educational activities to improve community members' oral health habits.
