Why the Master File?
Dental hygienists are licensed health care professionals, who support the health and well being of the American public through oral health promotion, education, prevention, and therapeutic services. Although there is evidence that dental hygienists play a central role in assuring access to dental services and improving oral health outcomes in the U.S., the importance of dental hygienists is not understood by many stakeholders concerned about oral health in America. Exacerbating the difficulty of the importance of hygienists is the absence of reliable data about dental hygienists in the U.S. ADHA recognized the need to address this information gap and is doing so through the Master File Project. What does the Master File contain? The ADHA Master File contains data that spans the continuum from undergraduate education through practice and comprise databases of current dental hygiene programs, degree completion programs, masters programs, students and over 150,000 licensed dental hygienis
