Kaiser Permanente is facing opposition in Oregon following its decision to eliminate the periodontal hygienist classification from its union contract, according to a news story in the Lund Report. Last week 70 protesters showed up at the company headquarters in Northeast Portland. The move, which went into effect on October 31, impacts 17 of Kaiser’s 125 hygienists who have specialized in periodontal care but are now classified as general hygienists,

More U.S. parents are reporting that their children have very good or excellent oral health, according to a new study in Preventing Chronic Disease (December 5, 2013), a journal by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. The study examined changes in parent-reported children’s oral health status and the number of preventive dental visits in 50 states and the District of

Markers of oral disease seem to be associated with lower cognitive status, according to a study published in the December issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association (Vol. 144:12, pp. 1362-1371). Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studied data from more than 11,000 participants in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study from 1996 to 1998. Almost 10,000 participants answered dental screening questions. More than

A dental student at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) College of Dentistry was awarded first place in the clinical research/public health category in the American Dental Association/Dentsply Student Clinician Research Program at the recent ADA annual meeting in New Orleans. Paul Johnson, a fourth-year dental student, won for his presentation entitled “Alveolar Bone Loss in Subjects with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis.” The study found that patients with rheumatoid