Unmet Dental Care Needs Children with Special Health Care Needs

Background:  Children with special health have many challenges that impact the quality of life and socialization. During this critical development stages, it is critical that children with special circumstances have their health care needs met. The purpose of the study is to examine the prevalence and correlates of dental services utilization among children with special health care needs.  Methods:  The National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) is a national probability survey of children that includes the physical and mental health status, access to quality health care, including information on the child’s family, neighborhood and social context.  Data for 5, 503 children with a diagnosis of depression, developmental disability or autism spectrum disorders were weighted and analyzed using STATA 12.0 for Windows.  Alpha of 0.05 was used for all significance levels.  Results:  The sample mean age was 10.9 (SD =4.39); 36.8% were female, of whom 34.8% had dental care comapred to 50.2% males; 68.3% White, 15.6% African American and 16.1% Other racial groups. At the multivariate general model, African American children were 57% less than white children to have dental care (OR=0.43; 95% CI: 0.23 -0.80; p<0.01). Among whites, race (OR=2.7; p <0.02). Parental social support (OR=2.6; p<0.001) and having autism (OR=5.6; p<0.02) among African American is associated with increased use of dental services. Having insurance was significantly associated with high dental use. Conclusions: Implications for public health policy and practice will be discussed among with further results of stratified analysis.