Mother-Perceived Social Capital and Children’s Oral Health and Use of Dental Care in the United States

Objectives. We examined the association between mother-perceived neighborhood social capital and oral health status and dental care use in US children. Methods. We analyzed data for 67 388 children whose mothers participated in the 2007 National Survey of Children’s Health. We measured mothers’ perceived social capital with a 4-item social capital index (SCI) that captures reciprocal help, support, and trust in the neighborhood. Dependent variables were mother-perceived ratings of their child’s oral health, unmet dental care needs, and lack of a previous-year preventive dental visit. We performed bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analyses for each outcome. Results. After we controlled for potential confounders, children of mothers with high (SCI = 5–7) and lower levels (SCI ‡ 8) of social capital were 15% (P = .05) and about 40% (P £ .02), respectively, more likely to forgo preventive dental visits than were children of mothers with the highest social capital (SCI = 4). Mothers with the lowest SCI were 79% more likely to report unmet dental care needs for their children than were mothers with highest SCI (P = .01). Conclusions. A better understanding of social capital’s effects on children’s oral health risks may help address oral health disparities

Provision of Preventive Dental Services in Children Enrolled in Medicaid by Nondental Providers

Aims of this study are to determine (1) the association of oral health services (OHS) provided by nontraditional providers with the percentage of Medicaid children 0 to 5 years of age who receive ≥1 preventive services from all provider types in the United States; and (2) characteristics of state Medicaid policies associated with provision of OHS

First in the Nation: Eighty Years of Graduate Dental Public Health Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1936–2016

Since its early teaching activity in 1936, the North Carolina Dental Public Health program has had an outstanding 80-year history that is summarized into five themes. It has served as a key resource for training the dentists in public health, which has benefited the state of North Carolina. It has provided the science base for improving oral health with new prevention technologies. The program has advanced public health practice and collaborations with state and federal agencies, and it has maintained a robust research program that developed methods for solving population-based problems. Finally, it has offered a comprehensive teaching program that supported the knowledge base for the MPH program and research methods for PhD students in epidemiology and health services research. The UNC research focus on early childhood caries reversed the increase observed in statewide surveys, and its prevention methods have been adopted nationally. Rozier also documents the first courses in dental public health which provided definitions and direction for the specialty. Oral diseases are largely preventable, but they affect more than three billion people worldwide. First in the Nation is elegantly convincing in its message—that a major health sciences campus without a comprehensive Dental Public Health academic program is intellectually devoid of part of its purpose for being

Dental Caries: Racial and Ethnic Disparities Among North Carolina Kindergarten Students

Objectives. We examined racial/ethnic disparities in dental caries among kindergarten students in North Carolina and the cross-level effects between students’ race/ethnicity and school poverty status. Methods. We adjusted the analysis of oral health surveillance information (2009–2010) for individual-, school-, and county-level variables. We included a cross-level interaction of student’s race/ethnicity (White, Black, Hispanic) and school National School Lunch Program (NSLP) participation (< 75% vs ‡ 75% of students), which we used as a compositional school-level variable measuring poverty among families of enrolled students. Results. Among 70 089 students in 1067 schools in 95 counties, the prevalence of dental caries was 30.4% for White, 39.0% for Black, and 51.7% for Hispanic students. The adjusted difference in caries experience between Black and White students was significantly greater in schools with NSLP participation of less than 75%. Conclusions. Racial/ethnic oral health disparities exist among kindergarten students in North Carolina as a whole and regardless of school’s poverty status. Furthermore, disparities between White and Black students are larger in nonpoor schools than in poor schools. Further studies are needed to explore causal pathways that might lead to these disparities

Parental perceptions of children's oral health: The Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS)

Abstract Background Dental disease and treatment experience can negatively affect the oral health related quality of life (OHRQL) of preschool aged children and their caregivers. Currently no valid and reliable instrument is available to measure these negative influences in very young children. The objective of this research was to develop the Early Childhood Oral Health Impact Scale (ECOHIS) to measure the OHRQL of preschool children and their families. Methods Twenty-two health professionals evaluated a pool of 45 items that assess the impact of oral health problems on 6-14-year-old children and their families. The health professionals identified 36 items as relevant to preschool children. Thirty parents rated the importance of these 36 items to preschool children; 13 (9 child and 4 family) items were considered important. The 13-item ECOHIS was administered to 295 parents of 5-year-old children to assess construct validity and internal consistency reliability (using Cronbach's alpha). Test-retest reliability was evaluated among another sample of parents (N = 46) using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Results ECOHIS scores on the child and parent sections indicating worse quality of life were significantly associated with fair or poor parental ratings of their child's general and oral health, and the presence of dental disease in the child. Cronbach's alphas for the child and family sections were 0.91 and 0.95 respectively, and the ICC for test-retest reliability was 0.84. Conclusion The ECOHIS performed well in assessing OHRQL among children and their families. Studies in other populations are needed to further establish the instrument's technical properties

Oral Health Content of Early Education and Child Care Regulations and Standards

Almost two out of every three U.S. children younger than five receive child care from someone other than their parents. Health promotion in early education and child care (EECC) programs can improve the general health of children and families, but little is known about the role of these programs in oral health. We identified U.S. EECC program guidelines and assessed their oral health recommendations for infants and toddlers

Effects of Early Dental Office Visits on Dental Caries Experience

Objectives. We determined the association between timing of a first dentist office visit before age 5 years and dental disease in kindergarten. Methods. We used North Carolina Medicaid claims (1999–2006) linked to state oral health surveillance data to compare caries experience for kindergarten students (2005–2006) who had a visit before age 60 months (n = 11 394) to derive overall exposure effects from a zero-inflated negative binomial regression model. We repeated the analysis separately for children who had preventive and tertiary visits. Results. Children who had a visit at age 37 to 48 and 49 to 60 months had significantly less disease than children with a visit by age 24 months (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 0.88; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.81, 0.95; IRR = 0.75; 95% CI = 0.69, 0.82, respectively). Disease status did not differ between children who had a tertiary visit by age 24 months and other children. Conclusions. Medicaid-enrolled children in our study followed an urgent care type of utilization, and access to dental care was limited. Children at high risk for dental disease should be given priority for a preventive dental visit before age 3 years

Development of the Two‐Stage Rapid Estimate of Adult Literacy in Dentistry

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86828/1/j.1600-0528.2011.00619.x.pd

Accuracy of record linkage software in merging dental administrative data sets: Accuracy of record linkage software

To determine the accuracy of record matching using “Link King” software that uses an ordinal score for the certainty that linked records are valid matches

Agreement between structured checklists and Medicaid claims for preventive dental visits in primary care medical offices

For program evaluation purposes, the feasibility of matching Medicaid claims with physician-completed structured checklists (encounter forms, EFs) was assessed in a pediatric office-based preventive dental program. We examined agreement on visits (weighted kappa) and predictors of a match between EFs and claims (multinomial logit model with practice-level clustering). In total, 34,171 matches occurred between 41,252 EFs and 40,909 claims, representing 82.8 per cent of EFs and 83.5 per cent of claims. Agreement on visits was 56 per cent (weighted kappa = 0.66). Pediatric practices provided the majority of visits (82.4%) and matches. Increasing age of child and residence in same county as the medical practice increased the likelihood of a match. Structured checklists can be combined with claims to better assess provision of preventive dental services in pediatric primary care. However, future research should examine strategies to improve the completion of structured checklists by primary care providers if data beyond claims are to be used for program evaluation