Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Why news in Dunn County matters to you

My favorite dental hygiene story of the day comes from the Dunn County News in Eau Claire region of Wisconsin. You should read it for yourself (http://www.dunnconnect.com/articles/2008/03/03/variety/variety06.txt). A local project received a grant of almost $70,000 so that a dental hygienist in the area can improve the access to care for the developmentally disabled.

This kind of thing is happening all over the country. So it's good that dental hygienists are delivering the goods after talking for years about how access to care can be expanded.

A couple of things on my mind this morning:

1.) As a somewhat distant observer of dental hygiene (sitting in front of a computer in Tulsa, OK), I tend to think of dental hygienists in Michigan and Wisconsin as fighting uphill battles all the time ... a surplus of hygienists struggling for leverage in the marketplace. So it's nice to me to see this story out of Wisconsin, because this is where the cutting edge is for the profession.

2.) I gave you the Web site for the article above. You're likely not from Dunn County, if you're reading this on the Internet. But a larger percentage of newspapers are allowing readers to directly comment on a story on that site, rather than having a forum or "letters to the editor" on a different part of the site. Hygienists talk all the time about getting the attention of the public on dental hygiene issues.

Is there a better place than the "post a comment" section in a newspaper to offer your opinion about dentistry, particularly if it's dental hygiene that's been shown in a good light? You don't have to be from Dunn County to get excited.

Say something.

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