Dr. Ken Cooperman
NYSSO had a strong presence at the 2026 New York State Dental Association’s House of Delegates Meeting.
There continues to be a severe shortage of Dental Hygienists and Dental Assistants in our state. A repeated concern we have heard from our membership is the difficulty finding auxiliary staff. There are also long-standing concerns about the challenges facing our dental assistants as they try to become Registered Dental Assistants (RDAs).
Unfortunately, New York is the most restrictive state in the nation when it comes to dental assisting: of the approximately 20,000 dental assistants working in New York, only about 5% have become licensed Registered Dental Assistants.
Over the last few years, NYSSO has been working with NYSDA to lower the existing barriers to dental assistant licensure, and to broaden the scope of what procedures assistants can legally perform.
This year, we had three proposed resolutions that were proposed in conjunction with the New York County Dental Society. One resolution was for NYSDA to support the fast-tracking of foreign-trained dentists, so they could be eligible for licensure as an RDA without having to take a year long dental assisting course. This passed with flying colors.
We had two additional resolutions that were met with more resistance: one was to recognize the category of Certified Orthodontic Assistant, as they do in New Jersey; the other was to use other less restrictive states like Michigan as role models to permit a broadening of permissible procedures that can be performed by non-licensed and licensed assistants. Although variations of these proposals have come repeatedly before the house over the last two decades, the House of Delegates did not embrace these changes. Alternatively, at our behest, the HOD recommended convening a task force consisting of members of the New York State Board for Dentistry, NYSDA Committee Members, representatives from the Dental Hygiene and Dental Assisting Associations and other “interested parties’—like NYSSO. This task force is to hammer out a broadly acceptable range of suggested changes that could then be presented to the State Board and Department of Education in order to facilitate dental assistant licensure. It is our hope that by getting everyone around the same metaphorical table, we can finally move this issue forward.
Ken Cooperman
Secretary, NYSSO
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