The report, "Oral Health Status and Access to Oral Health Care for U.S. Adults," was released this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics.
It presents statistics from the 2008 National Health Interview Survey on selected measures of oral health status and oral healthcare access for adults ages 18 to 64. The sample size was 17,337.
Here are some of the key findings:
Among adults ages 18 to 64, about three-quarters had very good or good oral health, 17% had fair oral health, and 7% had poor oral health.
Among adults ages 18 to 64, the main reason to forgo a dental visit for an oral health problem in the past six months was cost; 42% could not afford treatment or did not have insurance. Fear was the reason that 1 out of 10 adults did not visit the dentist for an oral health problem.
Level of education was positively associated with having better comparative oral health status; 20% of adults ages 18 to 64 with less than a high school diploma compared with 39% of adults with a bachelor's degree or higher had better oral health status than others of the same age. However, adults with a bachelor's degree or higher (33%) were almost twice as likely as those with less than a high school diploma (18%) to forgo a dental visit for a problem because they thought it was not important.
Adults in poor families (28%) were more than twice as likely as adults in families that were not poor (13%) to have worse oral health status than others the same age. Adults with Medicaid (21%) were almost twice as likely as adults overall (12%) to not have had a dental visit in more than five years.
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