Abstract
Purpose: Many school-aged children have not received dental care in West Virginia, despite mandated statewide requirements of a dental evaluation and dental treatment before entering school, and the provision of Medicaid/CHIP insurance coverage for children from families below the federal poverty level. An innovative mobile oral health program to educate children, provide preventive care, and bring technology to public schools was developed for West Virginia children in a need shortage area. It was unknown if the unmet dental needs challenge was greater for male or female children residing in that area. The purpose of this study was to determine whether there was a difference by sex in the number of attendees and the incidence of dental caries for children who visited a school-based mobile dental facility.
Methods: School-aged children who had not had a dental examination within the previous year were offered school-based examinations/assessments, preventive care, and oral health education via a mobile oral health program following parental/guardian consent. Data were collected concerning the number of current carious teeth in need of restoration. Descriptive statistics and chi square analyses were conducted to analyze the data.
Results: There were 429 students evaluated at the school-based mobile dental facility. Half (50.3%) were male. Referrals for additional necessary oral/medical care were made for 214 (50.1%) children; 45.9% of males and 53.3% of females (p= 0.287) had dental caries.
Conclusion: Results from this study indicate that sex was not a statistically significant factor in school-based mobile dental facility attendance nor in current dental caries incidence among school-aged children in an underserved area of West Virginia.
- dental care
- dental caries
- mobile dentistry
- West Virginia
- oral health disparities
- dental public health
- community interventions
Footnotes
R. Constance Wiener, MA, DMD, PhD is an associate professor, Department of Dental Practice and Rural Health, School of Dentistry, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV; Tiffany Summerlin, RDH, BSDH is the program coordinator, Monongalia County Health Department, Morgantown, WV; Lee B. Smith, MD, JD is the Monongalia County Health Officer and Monongalia County Health Department Executive Director, Morgantown, WV; Daniel T. Carrier, DDS is the Monongalia County Health Department Director, Dentistry and Smile Express, Morgantown, WV; Michael A. Wiener, DMD, MBA is the Smile Express dentist, Monongalia County Health Department, Morgantown, WV.
This manuscript supports the NDHRA priority area, Population level: Health services (community interventions)
Disclosures
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U54GM104942-04. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Data
Study data were collected and managed using REDCap electronic data capture tools hosted at West Virginia University. De-identified data for this study are available upon request to Tiffany Summerlain: Tiffany.D.Summerlin{at}wv.gov
- Received May 8, 2019.
- Accepted November 4, 2019.
- Copyright © 2020 The American Dental Hygienists’ Association