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Washington's Health Equity CE Requirement, Explained

Updated August 2026

This page is informational and reflects the rules as of August 2026. It is not legal advice and it is not a substitute for the Washington Department of Health. Verify your own requirements with DOH and your credential's rules before you renew.

How much
Two hours, at least once every four years
Who it reaches
Nearly every licensed health profession in Washington, not clinicians alone
Where the rule lives
WAC 246-12-820 and 246-12-830, with RCW 43.70.613
Must my course be state-approved
No. It does not have to be on any Department of Health list

Washington requires a minimum of two hours of health equity continuing education at least once every four years. The requirement reaches nearly every licensed health professional in the state, not only mental health clinicians, and it sits in WAC 246-12-800 through 246-12-830 with the qualifying content described at RCW 43.70.613.

Two things about this requirement are widely misunderstood, and both of them cost people time. Your course does not have to appear on any Department of Health list. And the two hours are a floor rather than a fixed number, because a profession's own board may require more.

Jump to: Who has to do this  ·  Two hours is the minimum  ·  The Department of Health list  ·  What makes a training qualify  ·  Two questions the rules do not answer  ·  What you need to keep

Who has to do this

WAC 246-12-800 sets the scope: health care professionals credentialed under RCW 18.130.040 who already have a continuing education requirement. That is a wide net. Counselors, marriage and family therapists, social workers, nurses, dentists, physical therapists, massage therapists, optometrists, respiratory care practitioners, and most other credentialed professions are inside it.

For licensed mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists, licensed advanced social workers, and licensed independent clinical social workers, the requirement also appears in your own chapter at WAC 246-809-630, which states that all licensed counselors shall complete a minimum of two hours in health equity continuing education training every four years.

Two hours is the minimum, not the number

WAC 246-12-820 sets the floor at two hours every four years unless the relevant rule-making authority specifies a higher number of hours in rule. Some professions have set a higher one. Massage therapists, for example, carry a four-hour requirement under WAC 246-830-475.

So the honest instruction is to check your own profession's chapter rather than stopping at the two-hour headline. For licensed counselors, MFTs, and social workers, WAC 246-809-630 sets it at two.

Does my course have to be on the Department of Health's list?

No, and this is the most consequential misunderstanding about the requirement.

DOH publishes a short set of free health equity trainings, five of them at the time of writing, and the page they sit on never uses the words approve or endorse. RCW 43.70.613 addresses the point directly: the department must make information about available courses available, and it is not required that courses be included in that information in order to fulfill the requirement.

The confusion is understandable, because Washington's other mandated topic does work that way. The two rules read alike and behave differently.

Health equity
No list requirement. The rule asks only that the content be consistent with WAC 246-12-830, and the statute says explicitly that a course does not have to appear in the department's information to count.
Suicide assessment, treatment, and management
List required. WAC 246-809-630 requires the training to be selected from the department's model list, so no provider can satisfy it with a course of their own design unless that course is on the list.

If a provider tells you their course is the one the state approved for health equity, they are describing something that does not exist.

What makes a training qualify

WAC 246-12-830 sets three standards, and a training has to meet all three.

Standard one
Content
It must include implicit bias training that identifies strategies to reduce bias during assessment and diagnosis, with topics drawn from RCW 43.70.613(3)(c).
Standard two
Trainer
The person teaching it must have demonstrated knowledge and experience in health equity, and the content must be based on current empirical research and known best practices.
Standard three
Assessment
The training must assess your ability to apply health equity concepts in practice, either through a knowledge assessment at the end or through an attendance attestation document.

That third standard is the one that quietly rules things out. A recorded lecture with no assessment and no attestation does not meet the rule as written, regardless of how good the lecture is.

The topics the statute names

RCW 43.70.613(3)(c) describes instruction on skills to address the structural factors, such as bias, racism, and poverty, that manifest as health inequities, and lists topics that may be included:

  • Strategies for recognizing patterns of health care disparities at the individual, institutional, and structural level
  • Intercultural communication skills training
  • Implicit bias training to identify strategies to reduce bias during assessment and diagnosis
  • Methods for addressing the emotional well-being of children and youth of diverse backgrounds
  • Ensuring equity and antiracism in care delivery
  • Structural competency training
  • Cultural safety training

Worth noticing what is on that list. Structural competency and cultural safety are named in the statute alongside implicit bias, which means Washington's rule already reaches past the individual-clinician-learns-about-groups model that most health equity CE still teaches.

Two questions the rules do not answer

Most pages about this requirement state these confidently. We are not going to, because the rule text does not support it and you deserve to know where the line is.

Do the two hours count inside my 32, or on top of them?

The rules do not say, and the drafting is conspicuous.

Read WAC 246-809-630 in order. The ethics requirement reads at least six of the 32 hours. The roles and boundaries requirement reads at least two of the 32 hours. The suicide requirement carries its own sentence stating that those hours count toward the total 32 hours of CE. The health equity requirement has neither construction. It reads as a freestanding sentence with no phrase tying it to the total.

Every secondary source we can find, including the Department of Health's own profession pages and WAMFT's guidance, treats health equity as sitting inside the 32. None of them cites anything for it, because there is nothing to cite.

We have written to the Department of Health to ask, and this page will carry their answer when it arrives. Until then, the low-cost precaution is simply not to let one course do double duty: keep your two health equity hours distinct from the six ethics and law hours and the two roles and boundaries hours, since those two categories are explicitly required to be separate from each other anyway.

When does my four-year clock start?

There is no published answer for behavioral health.

The model rules were filed in November 2022 and took effect in December 2022. Some professions were given explicit start dates in their own rulemaking. Respiratory care practitioners, for instance, were told they must complete the training each reporting cycle beginning January 1, 2024. We could not find an equivalent published start date for licensed counselors, MFTs, or social workers, and the Department of Health's continuing education pages for these professions do not state one.

Practically, if you have not completed a qualifying two hours and your renewal is coming, do it this cycle. This question is also in our letter to the Department of Health.

What you need to keep

WAC 246-12-830 allows the assessment requirement to be met by either a knowledge assessment or an attendance attestation document, so make sure whatever your provider gives you shows one of the two. Beyond that, WAC 246-809-650 asks licensed counselors, MFTs, and social workers to keep transcripts, instructor letters, certificates of completion, or other formal records confirming completion.

Where Lovewell fits

One of our trainings is built to the two-hour shape this requirement asks for. Another carries health equity hours inside a larger program.

NOVEMBER 6, 2026
Missed and Mistaken: OCD in Neurodivergent Clients
Live on Zoom, 9:00 AM to 12:15 PM Pacific. 3 NBCC continuing education hours, of which 2 are built to meet Washington's health equity requirement under RCW 43.70.613, WAC 246-12-820, and WAC 246-12-830.
It covers both halves the rule asks for. One is the bias that operates inside standard assessment, where a measure written for a neurotypical reader returns a distorted answer. The other is self-reflection on how a clinician's own neurotype and social position shape what they notice, what they call a symptom, and what they let pass.
A minute-by-minute agenda documenting the time in each category is available on request. Registration details are coming.
REGISTRATION OPEN
Record 2 hours toward health equity, taught in their own block within a 15-hour program carrying 15 NBCC continuing education hours. In person, Federal Way, September 11 and 12, 2026.
This one is a supervision intensive that includes health equity hours rather than a health equity training. If the two hours are all you need, it is more program than the requirement asks for.

When Neurodiversity Is the "Problem" also carries 3 hours toward health equity within a program carrying 3 NBCC continuing education hours. The next date has not been scheduled.

All three are approved under ACEP No. 7776. If you need your two hours before November 6, the free trainings listed on the Department of Health's page will do it. Those are third-party trainings offered by other organizations. Lovewell does not deliver them, they carry no NBCC credit from us, and we have not evaluated them against WAC 246-12-830 for you.

Refund, cancellation, grievance, and non-discrimination policies for Lovewell programs are published on our CE Information and Policies page. Accommodation requests go to [email protected]. It remains each attendee's responsibility to confirm that their own licensing board accepts these hours toward their specific renewal requirements.

Primary sources

Lovewell Initiatives, LLC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7776. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Lovewell Initiatives, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the programs.

Lovewell Initiatives, LLC
PO Box 6841, Tacoma, WA 98417
(253) 470-8246
[email protected]
www.livelovewell.co

NBCC Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 7776