Illinois Enacts New Training Requirements for Public Health Dental Hygienists

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) recently signed legislation (HB2676) that creates new structure and additional training requirements for public health dental hygienists, the American Dental Education Association reports.

The new law makes many changes that include:

• Establishing minimum hours of required training for topics that public health dental hygienists are already required to study
• Creating a new requirement for training to include five hours of didactic courses that cover special needs dentistry, teledentistry, nutritional needs of geriatric and low-income patients, communication techniques with non-English speaking patients, cultural competency and professional ethics
• Requiring training programs to include completion of an eight-hour, in-person classroom review that includes a comprehension exam that reviews topics required for study
• Requiring that mandatory courses are provided by an institution accredited by the Commission on Dental Accreditation or a statewide dental or dental hygiene association approved by the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation

Read the full legislation at: ilga.gov/legislation/