President-Elect Brandjord Tells Senate DHATs Must Go

ADA President-elect Robert Brandjord, DDS, on July 14 urged a Senate committee to reject a plan that would allow therapists with as little as 18 months of training to perform surgical procedures on American Indians and Alaska Natives, as proposed in the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (S. 1057).

“This is second-class care,” he said. “It is unsafe, unfair and unneeded. It is an admission that those who been entrusted to care for these people have essentially given up on them.”

The ADA supports training community-based dental aides to provide patient education and preventive services to people in remote villages, Dr. Brandjord added, but absolutely cannot support any plan that would let inadequately trained individuals perform such irreversible surgical procedures as extracting teeth, drilling cavities and performing pulpotomies.

Dr. Brandjord, an oral surgeon, pointed out that even extracting a tooth can have serious, even life-threatening complications. Therapists, he said, “are not prepared to routinely perform these procedures safely.”

Below are links to Dr. Brandjord’s testimony—including attachments—and the ADA position paper on Alaska’s Dental Health Aide Therapist (DHAT) program.

• Statement of the ADA to the Committee on Indian Affairs and the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions U.S. Senate on S.1057, The Indiana Health Care Improvement Act Amenedments of 2005 I PDF file/620k
• ADA Position on the Dental Health Aide Program in Alaska I PDF file/26k

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