ADHA applauds Kellogg report on midlevel providers

A day after ADA President Ron Tankersley issued a statement questioning parts of a new W.K. Kellogg Foundation report on dental therapists, the American Dental Hygienists Association (ADHA) has come out in full support of the same report.

The report, "Training new dental health providers in the U.S.," by Burton L. Edelstein, D.D.S., president of the Children's Dental Health Project, offers an analysis of the training of dental therapists and other existing and proposed dental health professionals. The report addresses the potential impact of both a two-year educated dental therapist model as well as a three-year educated provider model that would incorporate dental hygiene and dental therapy. The dental therapist model has a long history of successfully expanding care to underserved children as part of a comprehensive system of care managed by dentists, according to Dr. Edelstein.

ADHA has long acknowledged the need for new dental providers to deliver needed oral health care services, particularly for the more than 108 million Americans who do not currently have dental insurance. In addition, ADHA advocates for additional entry points into the oral health care delivery system for population groups that cannot access services through the traditional private practice dental office. The association supports efforts toward the creation of new dental team members who have graduated from accredited educational programs, are licensed, and are able to provide care directly to the public.

"We are going to see increasing demand for new types of dental providers like those outlined in the Kellogg Foundation report," said ADHA President Lynn Ramer, L.D.H., in a press release. "At a time when there is so much focus on access to health care in Washington, DC, and across the nation, solutions such as those outlined in the report, as well as looking at ways to use the existing dental hygiene workforce in an advanced practice capacity, is a concept that can no longer be ignored."

ADHA applauds Kellogg for its exploration of the dental therapist model, including the dental therapist-dental hygienist model currently in place internationally, the release concluded.