Our colleagues at the Schuyler Center are looking for support so that essential dental care be included in the final budget. Their summary is listed below.
Dear Colleagues,
The Schuyler Center invites your organization to sign-on to a letter to the Governor and Legislative leaders requesting inclusion of a provision to increase access to essential dental care be included in the final 2025-2026 budget. This provision – which is included in the Executive Budget – would allow dental hygienists to provide additional services in more settings when in a collaborative arrangement with a dentist.
Dental hygienists are essential oral health providers already embedded in communities across the state. This provision would extend collaborative practice to additional settings and allow dental hygienists to perform some additional services. Numerous states have already extended the range of services hygienists can offer and the environments in which they can practice, but New York has not kept pace with national trends.
We urge you to support join us in supporting this budget provision because evidence from other states and research strongly indicates that expanding collaborative practice dental hygiene would greatly enhance access to care for underserved populations. This is a critical step toward addressing the ongoing dental access crisis in the communities and the populations we serve.
The bill language included in the Executive Budget (Health and Mental Hygiene, Part X) and can be viewed here.
For additional information on oral health workforce, please see the Schuyler Center’s report, From Barriers to Bridges: Redesigning New York’s Oral Health Workforce for Equity and Access (Feb 2025), also on our website, Oral Health Workforce | Schuyler Center
Thank you for your interest in making oral health services more accessible in New York.
