Racial/Ethnic Disparities Among US Children and Adolescents in Use of Dental Care

Details

• Journal Article:
  Preventing Chronic Disease (PCD)
• Personal Author:
  Robison, Valerie ; Wei, Liang ; Hsia, Jason
• Description:
  Introduction
  
  Dental care among children has increased over the past decade, and racial/ethnic disparities have narrowed for some groups. We measured changes in racial/ethnic disparities in annual dental care for children and adolescents aged 2 to 17 years and conducted multivariate analysis to study factors associated with changes in disparities over time.
  
  Methods
  
  We used Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data to obtain crude prevalence estimates of dental care use and calculated absolute disparities and changes in disparities for 3 racial/ethnic groups of children and adolescents compared with non-Hispanic white children and adolescents relative to fixed points in time (2001 and 2016). We pooled all single years of data into 3 data cycles (2001–2005, 2006–2010, and 2011–2016) and used multivariate regression to assess the relationship between dental care use and race/ethnicity, controlling for the covariates of age, sex, parents’ education, household income, insurance status, and data cycle (time).
  
  Results
  
  Use increased by 18% only in low-income children and adolescents. Low-income Hispanic (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR] = 0.98; 95% CI, 0.94−1.02) and Asian (aPR = 0.92; 95% CI, 0.83−1.02) participants showed no difference in dental care use relative to non-Hispanic white participants, but non-Hispanic black participants had significantly lower use (aPR = 0.84; 95% CI, 0.81−0.88). Public and private insurance were associated with a doubling of use among low-income children.
  
  Conclusion
  
  We saw a modest increase in dental care use and a narrowing of disparities for some low-income children and adolescents. Use among low-income Hispanic and Asian participants “caught up” with use among Hispanic white participants but remained well below that of children and adolescents in families with middle and high incomes. Disparities persisted for non-Hispanic black participants at all income levels.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Original Research
• Source:
  Prev Chronic Dis. 2020; 17
• ISSN:
  1545-1151
• Pubmed ID:
  32730202
• Pubmed Central ID:
  PMC7417021
• Document Type:
  Journal Article
• Volume:
  17
• Collection(s):
  Preventing Chronic Disease
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:a6c4452f7fbcf7495ae75261034f8dc08ed14e64b8fe491d4383742dd015c71097b2eabace4c093dd993135ad9a36170e752072a78596a211ae5d195622bbbe0
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/92128/cdc_92128_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 411.54 KB ]