Dental insurance, caregivers' preventive dental visits determinants of underserved

CHICAGO, March 20, 2007— Children's dental insurance and caregivers' preventive dental care visits play a significant role as determinants of underserved African-American children seeing a dentist, according to a study in this month's Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA).

The objective of the study, according to University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) researchers, was to investigate determinants of dental care visits among young, low-income African-American children. They found that children with private dental insurance were five times more likely and children receiving Medicaid were about two times more likely to have visited a dentist than those without dental insurance.

The researchers also found an association between a caregiver's prevention-oriented dental visit and their child seeing a dentist.

Caregivers who had had preventive dental visits were five times more likely to have taken their children to a dentist than caregivers who sought dental care only for treatment or not at all.

According to the researchers, this provides an explanation of an earlier finding that free care is not sufficient to eliminate differences in dental care utilization and oral health among underserved children.

"This underscores," the researchers wrote, "the importance of promoting caregivers' preventive behaviors in concert with increasing access to dental care and removing barriers to dental care."

Other determinants included a child's age, current and previous tooth decay, and caregiver's educational level.

In conducting the JADA-published study, researchers interviewed a representative sample of low-income African-American families in Detroit, assessing their dental visit history, dental insurance status and oral health behaviors. Study participants also received dental examinations, using the International Caries Detection and Assessment System. Of the 1,021 families completing the interview and examination, a subset of the 552 children aged 3 to 5 years (and their primary caregivers) was the focus of this analysis.

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