A Letter from Our Founder, Jamie Dooley
Mar 12, 2026In 2018, NNHH was born from a pattern I kept seeing and could no longer ignore. While coaching hundreds of hygienists, I noticed they were taking more CE credit hours than required, staying up all night reading other profession's journals, and strategizing innovation — yet when they tried to suggest improvements to office protocols, or collaborate with other providers, they were dismissed. The phrase I heard most often was this: "If I had a credential they recognized, I think they would actually listen to me."
That one sentence became the foundation of everything we have built. Eight years later, they are listening.
Welcoming Our Incoming Board President
Before we look at how far we have come, I want to thank our entire leadership team. Every board member and Advisory Group member we have had step forward and lead has been pivotal to our success. I'd like to officially welcome Tamara Thomas as our incoming Board Chair for 2026/27. Tamara's commitment to elevating the public's understanding of what dental hygienists actually do — our education, our scope, our preventive expertise — is exactly what this moment calls for. Read her full message to the NNHH community HERE.
Reclaiming Our Identity and Expanding Our Role
Tamara and I are in full agreement that for far too long, our profession has been handed a narrow identity. The message, spoken or simply assumed, was that our value was limited to the operatory — that our only worth was with a scaler in our hands. As my carpal tunnel wrists type this, I just received a text from another scared hygienist headed for surgery. We have damaged our bodies for the sake of a paycheck, yet we are capable of so much more.
I am 12 years out of clinical care, and I am certain I am having a greater impact on the oral-systemic health of our nation doing this work than I ever could have in private practice. Tamara has a full-time brick-and-mortar myofunctional therapy business that requires daily collaboration with multidisciplinary providers. Neither of us holds a traditional clinical role, yet we are deeply satisfied with being an RDH. We designed our ideal careers ourselves.
Dental hygienists bring broad skills to the healthcare landscape — oral health protocol development, curriculum design, project management, comprehensive assessments, risk stratification, and patient and provider education — with a deep understanding of the oral-systemic chronic disease states that most practitioners are ignoring — not out of neglect, but out of lack of education.
Hospitals and healthcare systems know they need an oral health expert and coordinator as a starting point, but none of their current providers are equipped to fill that role. What NNHH has been doing since 2018 — through member services, resource sharing, and advanced training — is preparing hygienists to share their expertise inside a healthcare system. Our students are educating their local medical providers as a requirement of their capstone projects, which has been a catalyst for many of them getting a seat at the leadership table, where their voice is not just heard, but valued.
The Barriers Are Real — So Is the Reason I Keep Going
Integration has moved slowly for structural and financial reasons. Oral health continues to be left out of the referral system, and the reasons are not always accidental. Some healthcare administrators fear that aggressively addressing oral-systemic disease would improve outcomes so rapidly that the long-term revenue tied to managing chronic conditions would decrease. Those systems will be the last to integrate us. The systems that place people above profits are already hiring hygienists — and as they demonstrate reductions in hospital-acquired infections, all-cause mortality, cost savings, and length of stay, they will publish that data and present it at conferences. That is how change spreads in healthcare. When the right systems lead, the rest will follow.
As a mom of a daughter with multiple special needs, I have a fire for healthcare transformation that will not go out. I see the disconnection firsthand every week as her case manager — it is not just that oral health is being left out; it is that the more specialized our providers become, the less they understand the connections and correlations that real people are suffering from. Systemic innovation is needed to bring all providers back to seeing whole people, not just their part.
Members and Students Stepping Into Dream Roles
Watching our members and students land promotions and dream roles — without going back to school — has been one of the greatest rewards of this journey. The right training and mentorship are far more individualized to the actual role than any degree program could be. Hygienists are now stepping into hospital roles, oncology care teams, community health settings, and administrative leadership — directing teams of integrated hygienists in pathways that have been commonplace for nurses for decades. Many do eventually pursue advanced degrees, with their systems funding and supporting that growth.
The CE Landscape and NNHH's Accreditation Standard
Integration has not been without barriers — training gaps, scope of practice limitations shaped by a profession with a conflict of interest in governing us, and a CE landscape long dominated by product companies and corporate interests. AGD PACE and ADA CERP approve CE providers, not individual programs, which has allowed commercially influenced content to carry the appearance of professional credentialing. Traditional dental CE was never designed to expand our potential or prepare us for roles beyond the operatory. If we want to be seen as the healthcare providers we are, we have to go above and beyond it. NNHH was built to do exactly that: research-based, unsponsored, unbiased programs built on ASTM E2659 standards and third-party accredited by ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB) — an organization the medical world already knows and trusts.
The 2028 Goal: Formal Post-Licensure Credentialing
The goal I am holding for 2028 — the decade mark — is formal post-licensure credentialing for registered dental hygienists working in healthcare systems as a recognized, standardized national pathway. Systems across the US and beyond now have at least one RDH on staff. It has been wonderful to watch it unfold. What we are still missing is the formal credential that makes it a professional standard. Every certificate program and every allied partnership we secure is a step toward that.
Investing in Yourself
Rethink what it means to invest in yourself. Most hygienists think of professional spending as the CE they are required to get — but that is a checkbox, not a path to career expansion. The investments that actually move you forward are the ones you choose: professional associations, targeted training, and mentorship aligned with where you want to go. Dedicate 5 percent of your hygiene income to those — above and beyond the number of dental CE credits you are required to take. Seek out environments that align with what you know is best for you and your patients. Be a forward thinker, and look for healthcare innovation that includes us. Change happens when we step into our full value and take ownership of our abilities as equal partners in care.
A Call to Lead
Leaders are molded by challenge and polished by grace. To the healthcare-based hygienists who have spent hours on Zoom with me, guided our curriculum development, taught in our programs, performed peer reviews, and advised our board — please know how grateful I am for you and your leadership. NNHH would not exist without your willingness to take imperfect action, learn "by firehose," and share your knowledge gracefully. We can only rise when we do so together. You are who I model myself after every day. When imposter syndrome creeps in — and it does regularly — I remember your challenges and I pick myself back up. I do this for you, and for all the patients we have not been able to serve — those who may have died on paper from a heart attack or stroke, but whose untreated periodontal disease was the engine feeding the inflammatory fire.
We are all called to lead something, somewhere in our lives. If you are reading this today, it is your sign to trust your intuition and act on that small, still voice that calls from your heart — just as the pioneers of these roles did decades ago. Many of us carry the neurological imprint of workplace trauma — chronic stress, diminished confidence, and a nervous system conditioned to shrink — and it is important to name it, because that imprint is not a character flaw; it is a physiological response to an environment that was never designed to honor our full capacity.
The Power of Your Heart in Career Expansion and Enjoyment
I understand why so many of you do not feel like a leader. I have been bullied and beaten down as well, and I am sure there are people who would say I have been the bully from their perspective. I can let those incidents hold me back, or I can remind myself that "hurt people hurt people," send everyone love (including myself), and take small actions each day that align with the future I want to live in. One where we forgive each other and work together. A future based on collaboration, not competition.
As a trauma-informed coach, I can tell you from my own experience — and from the hundreds of hygienists I have had the privilege of mentoring over the years — that when you learn to listen to your heart over the noise of your thoughts, everything shifts. Your heart holds a wisdom that your mind will always try to talk you out of. It knows your purpose before you can articulate it. It knows when to stay and when to go. It knows what you are worth. When you begin to lead from that place, you will not just enjoy your career — you will enjoy your life again.
This is no longer a pipe dream. We are here. This is the year of the RDH!
Jamie Dooley, BIS, RDH, CWDP
Founder & Program Director
National Network of Healthcare Hygienists
