ODHA President, Deborah Tennyson Presidential Address, Fall 2012 Make The Connection Deborah Tennyson, ODHA President Good afternoon fellow colleagues and guests. It is a pleasure and an honor to speak to you today as President of The Ohio Dental Hygienists Association. It is amazing to be up here. WOW! I truly never imagined it. I'm not sure how I got here, but thank you to all of you who encouraged me and mentored me to have the confidence to do the job. First I have to thank a few people. Thank you to my family for supporting me in this endeavor. They have given up several hot meals and quality time. Linda Hewetson, I couldn't have asked for a better mentor to follow into the presidency. When you agreed to run for President it made my decision to run for President Elect a no brainer. I knew you would guide me through every step and now I feel I am ready. I hope I can do the same for Beth. Denise Bowers, you have always inspired me to do more. Watching you now climb the ADHA ladder makes me smile. You represent Ohio well. Jeanne Huber, you convinced me to take that first step and run for ADHA Alternate Delegate. Connie Hamm, you ran for Trustee of Columbus which allowed me to run for an ODHA office. Now Connie is on my executive council and I couldn't be more pleased. Hopefully we will see her giving this speech in a few years. Angie Demko, the one who got me to run for my first executive council position. I think it was her theme of "Bring a Friend, Make a Friend" that worked. Rachel Henry, you are my computer guru. Your knowledge and willingness to do what is needed makes everyone's job a little easier. Not to mention you are always there to bounce ideas off of. I hope to see you up here one day also. Thank you to the Columbus Component for your support and for organizing Installation Luncheon and a special thank you to Elizabeth Davidek. Elizabeth sponsored the personalized M&Ms in your favor boxes and solicited businesses for some great door prizes. Columbus is a component full of born leaders. You guys rock! One of my initiatives for the coming year is for a representative from ODHA to visit every Dental Hygiene program. It will be the President, President Elect or the Immediate Past President. 2 years ago Angie Demko was president and did this all herself. It was well received and I would like to see this be a permanent program. I hope we can continue to support this in our strategic plan every year. The more contact we have with students, the more they learn about us, and the more likely they are to become members. I encourage components to invite your Student members to your business meetings. If possible see if your component leadership can attend Student Chapter meetings. Make that connection. I would also like to come to your component meetings to talk with grass roots dental hygienists. The more people each of us connects with the more successful we will be as an organization. I will continue to promote the brand. Last year as Vice President I had all materials for this meeting with the new logo on it. Over the past year whenever I have seen our previous logo on something I have made it a point to have it updated, including today with our new Presidents' Pin and Past Presidents Pin. Every communication I have I put the new logo on it. I think we have officially retired the previous logo with our historian. Now how did I get here today? It's funny, last year when I decided to run for President Elect I thought "Hmmm….This should be an easy legislative year". We had just passed HB 190 and The Oral Health Access Supervision Program was put into action. The Ohio State Dental Board just needed to make the rules. All should be good. Then a wave of movements occurred that have and could be affecting dental hygiene. First it was the OSDB making rules to change to scope of practice. The rules allowed EFDA's, CDA's and BQP's to monitor N2O and for Licensed Dental Hygienists to administer N20 both with a 6 hour course. Even though we were in favor of the change for Dental Hygienists, we were not in favor of the manner in which it was done. We felt it should have been done through legislation since it was a scope of practice change. I personally testified to this at the OSDB public hearing representing ODHA. Next it was the ODA passing a resolution to allow EFDA's and CDA's to scale supragingivally. If this ever becomes a bill I will be there to represent ODHA at the Statehouse testifying against it and be more than proud to do it. Then just after Annual Session last year it was the Kellogg foundation working with UHCAN Ohio wanting to bring the dental therapist to Ohio to address Access to Care. After listening to their proposal and your comments in yesterday's professional issues forum I have no doubt we have battle to fight. I will be there on front line for you. All of these events have just motivated me more. I don't think it is going to be an easy legislative year. I do think it is an exciting time to be a leadership role. I am ready to be representing ODHA. It helps that we have the greatest lobbyists. I know they are not here, but THANK YOU to Governmental Policy Group. Over the years Brooke, Victor, Matt and now Andrew have gone to bat for us. They have written compelling testimony for us whenever needed. What does all this mean for dental hygiene in Ohio? It means change is coming. How we choose to adapt to the changes will determine our future. If we do not direct our profession someone else will. We need to take control or be controlled. I say we take control and direct our profession. The way we can do this is: MAKE THE CONNECTION! We all need to make the connection to our legislators, to stakeholders, dentists, fellow dental hygienists (both members and potential members) and our future dental hygienists in the dental hygiene programs in Ohio. We can all start by making that initial contact with our legislator. Email or write them and let them know who you are. Let them know you are available to talk to about anything dental. We can all start by educating legislators to the education we have and what we are capable of. We need to educate them to the fact that the mouth is connected to the body. Educate them to the fact that we cannot be healthy unless we have a healthy mouth. It all starts with prevention and we are the prevention specialists, the hygienius. If you are a little intimidated by the idea of connecting with your legislator talk to our leadership, they will guide you, I will guide you. We need to educate stakeholders in the same manner as we educate our legislators. We need to connect with dentists. We don't need educate them as to what we can do; we need to convince them to let us do it. We need to work with dentists not against them. We are a team, the dental team. We need to work in collaboration with dentist to get the Oral Health Access Supervision Program in full force in Ohio. Together we can get things accomplished. We need to connect with fellow dental hygienists. It is the potential members that need the most education as what is happening in dental hygiene. They are not involved and therefore do not know the changes that could be coming. We need to inspire them to want to be informed, to want to be members. We are the only organization in Ohio that represents Dental Hygienists. We are all you have. We need to connect with our future dental hygienists in our dental hygiene programs. Let them know who we are and how important it are to become members once they are licensed dental hygienists. Let them know that ODHA is the professional organization that is here to advance and secure the profession in Ohio. Together if all connect we can make a difference. I look forward to serving as President of The Ohio Dental Hygienists' Association in the coming year! Thank you!   If you have questions or comments about the content of this site contact odhaadmin@odha.net Disclaimer Copyright © 2011, Ohio Dental Hygienists' Association, Inc.