American Dental Hygienists' Association Sets Attendance Record At 86th Annual Session In Washington D.C.

Main Category: Dentistry
Article Date: 08 Jun 2009 - 3:00 PDT

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More than 1,500 registered dental hygienists (RDH) from across the United States will travel to Washington D.C. to attend the 86th Annual Session of the American Dental Hygienists' Association (ADHA) June 17-23.

News Highlights

Year Two of the New Meeting Format

Building on the success of last year's event, ADHA will combine the Center for Lifelong Learning and Annual Session. This meeting format features a variety of continuing education career tracks on the front end and the ADHA business meetings on the back end.

Center for Lifelong Learning

Continuing education sessions have been designed for the entire dental team and organized into tracks to help identify areas of interest. The tracks and suggested audience act only as a guide as attendees are encouraged to register for any session of interest. Tracks have been designed for:

- Clinicians
- Educators
- Lifestyles
- New Hygienists
- Alternative Careers
- Students

For attendees who are looking to mix-and-match, there are 29 sessions available including a variety of general attendee sessions that fit their interests and their schedules.

86th Annual Session

Following the Center for Lifelong Learning will be the 86th Annual Session, June 21-23 at the Omni Shoreham hotel. The meeting will focus on the business related activities of the association. Forums and workshops have been streamlined to be topic driven and create a more collaborative discussion environment.

Growing Your Membership Online Workshop

On Tuesday, June 23, ADHA staff will host a workshop focusing on the variety of online resources available for constituents and components to help grow their membership. Attendees will learn about navigating social networking sites, with an emphasis on MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, and how they can play an important role in fostering communities and providing an integral resource for those who are interested in associations.

Attendees will learn how to integrate web 2.0 tools with their existing web 1.0 resources to expand their communication efforts. Staff will discuss how ADHA has used these sites in conjunction with the premier dental hygiene resource: http://www.adha.org. A portion of this workshop will include online hands-on training. The workshop will also feature a discussion on state website development-what works and what doesn't.

Legislative Chairs/Public Health Workshops

With recent legislative advances in a number of states throughout the country, traditional dental hygiene roles are beginning to shift. These two workshops, led by ADHA's Governmental Affairs division will highlight the recent advances and how they impact both hygienists and the public.

On Tuesday, June 23, state presidents and legislative chairs are invited to attend the Legislative Chairs workshop to get a comprehensive update on ADHA's advocacy efforts and learn more about how activities at the national level can be used to further advocacy programs within states. This year the workshop will focus on effective messaging of advocacy issues and will be an opportunity for state leaders to network with each other.

Immediately following the Legislative Chairs workshop will be the Organizing and Integrating Effective Public Health Efforts, open to all attendees. This networking session will offer participants an overview of evidence-based steps for organizing public health efforts within the community while focusing on the essential public health services to mobilize partnerships and integrate oral health into existing, sustainable programs. Multi-disciplinary approaches for expanding health promotion and disease prevention through the integration of oral health content will be showcased.

ADHA Lobby Day

More than 170 dental hygienists will participate in lobby day which will be held on Wednesday, June 17, 2009, prior to the beginning of the Center for Lifelong Learning at Annual Session. ADHA members will head to Capital Hill to speak directly with federal legislators and their staff to discuss policy issues that impact the dental hygiene profession and the patients it serves. Lobby day attendees will have legislative appointments scheduled for them by ADHA based on the legislative district in which they reside.

Lobby day will begin with a welcome and kick-off hosted by ADHA at the Omni Shoreham Hotel that will provide lobby day participants with a run-down of the day's agenda, talking points, and informational materials for legislators. Following the day's legislative visits, the participants will attend a wrap-up session on Capitol Hill.

The focus of these legislative visits will center on the growing importance of health reform, a central issue in the 111th Congress. Key reform proposals and significant committee action are expected from Congress in the near future. As health care providers, dental hygienists have an important voice in the health reform dialogue.

For more information on any of these topics, please visit http://www.adha.org.

ADHA is the largest national organization representing the professional interests of the more than 150,000 dental hygienists across the country. Dental hygienists are preventive oral health professionals, licensed in dental hygiene, who provide educational, clinical and therapeutic services that support total health through the promotion of optimal oral health. For more information about ADHA, dental hygiene or the link between oral health and general health, visit ADHA at http://www.adha.org.

Source
ADHA