President Signs SUPPORT Act, Expands Substance-Use CE Provider Options to Include Academy of General Dentistry

The Academy of General Dentistry (AGD) welcomes the reauthorization of the Substance Use-Disorder Prevention that Promotes Opioid Recovery and Treatment (SUPPORT) for Patients and Communities Act, originally enacted in 2018 to comprehensively address the opioid epidemic. With this bill signed into law by President Donald J. Trump today, AGD is now explicitly included as an approved provider of training for managing patients with substance abuse disorders (SUDs) as a condition of receiving or renewing a registration to prescribe controlled substance use.

“The signing of this bill is the result of persistent advocacy and a shared commitment to improving care and ensuring that general dentists have access to a range of training programs needed to fully care for their patients,” said AGD President Marc. J. Worob, a general dentist from Austin, Texas. “Including AGD as an authorized CE provider recognizes the important role that general dentists play in identifying and responding to substance-use and opioid-related risks. This will enable our members to meet DEA requirements efficiently while also supporting our broader mission to integrate oral health care into comprehensive, patient-centered substance-use and behavioral-health strategies. Our organization has long supported this policy and robustly lobbied for its expansion with numerous meetings with members of Congress.”

For the profession of dentistry, the law is especially significant, explicitly recognizing the AGD as an approved provider opening the door for general dentists to receive this required training from their professional association. An amendment was included under the umbrella of the Medication Access and Treatment Expansion Act (MATE Act), which requires one-time continuing-education (CE) training on substance use for health-care providers when they renew their DEA license. Originally, only a limited number of organizations were authorized to provide that CE training.

The SUPPORT Act aims to renew and strengthen federal efforts to combat substance-use disorders (SUDs), overdoses, and related mental-health challenges. Among its many provisions, the law authorizes renewed federal grant and support programs from prevention and treatment to recovery services, support for pregnant and postpartum women, youth prevention, community-based recovery organizations, housing for individuals in recovery, loan repayment for providers treating SUDs, overdose prevention, and mental and behavioral-health training.

AGD looks forward to continued collaboration with federal agencies and fellow dental-education organizations with high-quality, accessible CE programming that meets the new requirements and, ultimately, helps build a stronger, more coordinated health-care response to the nation’s ongoing substance-use and mental-health challenges.