Washington Health Equity CE Requirement: 2 Hours Every 4 Years (RCW 43.70.613 / WAC 246-12-830)

RCW 43.70.613 applies to each health profession licensed under Title 18 RCW that is already subject to continuing education. In practice that reaches most Washington clinical credentials — registered nurses and LPNs, physicians and physician assistants, dentists and dental hygienists, pharmacists, and many behavioral-health, therapy, and allied-health professions — because their boards and commissions require CE for renewal.

If your credential is licensed under Title 18 RCW and your board requires continuing education, the health-equity requirement almost certainly applies to you. Professions that are not subject to CE at all are outside the mandate, so the first step is simply to confirm that your board requires CE for renewal.

The statutory floor is two hours of health-equity continuing education completed at least once every four years. That is a minimum, not a ceiling: a profession's disciplining authority — its board or commission — can require more in its own rules, so you should confirm the exact number of hours and the cycle length for your specific credential rather than assume the two-hour floor is the whole obligation.

Because the cadence is 'at least once every four years,' most licensees satisfy it by completing a qualifying two-hour course once within their renewal window and keeping the certificate with their CE records. Write down the date your current cycle ends so your record shows the course was completed inside the correct window.

Washington does not pre-approve health-equity courses and does not maintain a mandatory approved-provider list. Instead, WAC 246-12-800 through 246-12-830 set the minimum standards a qualifying training course must meet, and a provider may offer a self-qualifying course that satisfies them. WAC 246-12-830 is the operative rule.

A qualifying course must include implicit-bias training that identifies strategies to reduce bias during assessment and diagnosis, cover the model content elements listed in RCW 43.70.613(3)(c), be developed and taught by a trainer with demonstrated knowledge and experience in health equity who uses current empirical research and known best practices, and administer an assessment at the end of the training to determine the knowledge gained. A course that meets those content, trainer, and assessment standards qualifies — no state approval stamp is issued or required.

The Washington Health Equity Continuing Education course is a two-hour, bilingual (English/Spanish) online course built to meet the WAC 246-12-830 standards and to count toward the RCW 43.70.613 requirement. It teaches all seven model content elements in RCW 43.70.613(3)(c) and ends with a recorded, scored assessment as the WAC 246-12-830(3)(a) evidence of knowledge gained. It is authored and taught by Dr. Ankur Fadia, a board-certified internal medicine physician who cares for a racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse patient population — meeting the qualified-trainer standard in WAC 246-12-830(2).

Because Washington self-qualifies these courses, this course is described as meeting the WAC 246-12-830 standards — never as 'state-approved' or 'DOH-approved,' which would be inaccurate. You remain responsible for confirming your own licensing board or commission accepts it for your profession and renewal cycle.