Iowa Dental Hygienists' Association (IDHA)

Mission:
To improve the public's total health, the mission of the Iowa Dental Hygienists' Association is to advance the art and science of dental hygiene by ensuring access to high-quality oral health care, increasing awareness of cost-effective benefits of prevention, promoting the highest standards of dental hygiene education, licensure, practice and research; and representing and promoting the interests of dental hygienists.

History:
There are many milestone dates and points of interest in the evolution of Their profession. Some you may not have heard but others are well known.

For instance the Southern Dental Association in 1888 resolved that someone should be employed to visit schools to instruct children in proper oral care. Ten years later in 1898 Dr. M.L. Rhein employed a "dental nurse" to perform prophylactic and educational services in his office. By 1902 F.W. Low advocated a profession for females he termed "odonticure" to go to people's homes to clean and polish teeth. The same year Dr. Cyrus Wright suggested that women have a year of college to be trained to clean teeth and that their profession be considered a sub-specialty of dentistry.

They all know that Dr. Alfred C. Fones trained Irene Newman, his assistant (and cousin) to provide preventive procedures in his office. He is considered the founder of dental hygiene since establishing the Fones School of Dental Hygiene, the first formal education and practical lab courses for hygienists in his carriage house in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1913. Of the thirty-two enrollees were teachers, nurses, dental assistants, and the wives of three dentists. Twenty-seven ladies graduated in 1914 and promptly formed the Connecticut Dental Hygienists Association. Irene Newman was granted the first dental hygiene license issued in Connecticut in 1917.