Fluoride, Regs and More
By: Morgan Plant
PDHA Governmental Relations Consultant

Fluoride
On Monday, May 12, members of the PAFluorideNOW Coalition, including PDHA members, gathered in the Rotunda of the Capitol for a press conference on our collective support for HB 1649, the Community Water Fluoridation Act. This legislation would provide that community water systems with 500 or more connections provide a therapeutic level of fluoride to prevent tooth decay. Currently only 54 percent of PA communities have publicly fluoridated water.

This effort has been spearheaded by a consortium of community health foundations, which has provided significant funding for a statewide public awareness campaign on the benefits of community water fluoridation. Over 250 members have joined in this coalition effort. The PA Dental Association has played a key leadership role in this effort and has worked with PDHA in attempting to get the legislation passed.

Currently HB 1649 (go to www.legis.state.pa.us and type in HB 1649 to access a copy of the bill) was voted out of the House Health and Human Services Committee last summer but has been languishing in the House Appropriations Committee since last November. To date we have been unable to get the House Appropriations Chairman, Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Phila) to schedule the bill for a vote in Appropriations and report it to the floor for consideration by the full House. The joint PDA/PDHA lobbying effort on this legislation continues and we are hopeful that we will get some action before the legislature breaks for the summer.

What can you do to help? Please contact your House member and ask them to ask Chairman Evans to schedule HB 1649 for a vote in Appropriations. If you don’t know who your House member is, go to the same website mentioned above and type in your zipcode. Contact information for all members is available on this website. The PAFluorideNOW Coalition has put up a new website at www.PAFluorideNOW.org that provides great information and background on the issue. It is also very easy to join the Coalition by filling out an on-line form.

Where Oh Where Have Our Regs Gone, Where Oh Where Can They Be?
Somewhere in the bowels of the PA Department of State the regs relating to: Local Anesthesia, the Public Health Dental Hygiene Practitioner, General Supervision for Radiographs and Changes in the ASA Classifications for Supervision are waiting for someone to pick them up and move them forward. After all of our excitement almost a year ago about passing our legislation, which was signed into law in late July, the State Board of Dentistry moved fairly quickly in writing new regulations based on passage of SB 455, made revisions to the previously drafted local anesthesia regs to reflect changes in the supervision requirements, made changes for the supervision requirements to reflect changes in the law and voted on them during the January 2008 meeting. While the regulatory review process is long and cumbersome in PA, when last we checked, the regs hadn’t yet left the building. (Reminds me of Elvis!) Once they do leave the building it will still take months before they finish being vetted by the Governor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office and are ready for publication as proposed rulemaking in the PA Bulletin. Once they are published as “proposed,” there is a 30-day public comment period. PDHA is preparing for that time and will keep you informed of the necessity for our members to send in written comments.

We know PA dental hygiene programs are chomping at the bit to start developing the curricula for local anesthesia and public health advocates are waiting impatiently for RDHs to be able to work in public health settings without dental supervision, but for now there is little we can do to move the process along. Until the regs are published as final and go into effect, we cannot move forward. This process is likely to take another 12 to 18 months. Stay tuned. As events progress, we will keep you informed.