Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #102271

Jennie Jacobs Kronenfeld, PhD¹, Sam S. Kim, MA¹, and Patrick A. Rivers, PhD, MBA². (1) Department of Sociology, Arizona State University, P.O. Box 874802, Tempe, AZ 85287-4802, 480-965-8053, jennie.kronenfeld@asu.edu, (2) College of Applied Sciences and Arts, Southern Illinois University, 1365 Douglas Drive, MC 6615, Carbondale, IL 62901-6615

Despite the biological and clinical advances in oral health, dental disease is still a problem for those of low socioeconomic status as well as racial and ethnic minorities. In this study, we use the Andersen Behavioral Model of predisposing, enabling and need factors to examine the effects of race, ethnicity, and income on dental care utilization. We also explore other possible factors such as education, availability of dental care provider, and insurance status that might influence the use of dental health care services. Using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) household component and dental event data (N=8,685), we tested the hypothesis that delay in dental care utilization is associated with minority and lower socioeconomic status. Analyses confirm that minority status and income as well as education, are predictive of the delay in dental care utilization. The rate of visits to dental health care services for non-Hispanic Blacks (HR [Hazard Ratio] 0.84, 95% C.I. 0.74-0.95) and Hispanics (HR 0.83, 95% C.I. 0.75-0.92) are significantly lower when compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Our results also confirm that a low level of education and low income is predictive of delay in dental health care utilization. We also used these types of predictors to examine variation in use of other dental care services (i.e. Dental hygienist). This study lends support to the theorized assumption that there are racial and ethnic differences in the pattern of dental care utilization.

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