Nearly a quarter of California's children have never seen a dentist, with black and Latino children and those whose families lack public or private dental insurance having the lowest rates of dental care, according to a new study from the California Health Care Foundation and UCLA's Center for Health Policy Research.
The biggest disparity appears to be keyed to dental insurance coverage. Fifty-four percent of privately insured children and 27 percent of publicly insured children had seen a dentist in the six months before the survey interviews, but just 12 percent of uninsured children had done so.
The study is published in the July issue of Health Affairs. It covers children 11 and under and is based on data from the 2005 California Health Interview Survey.
Interestingly, while researchers found that Latino and black children were less likely than Asian American or white children to have dental care, that disparity held true even among children of all races covered by Medi-Cal and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
The co-authors of the study, Nadereh Pourat, director of research planning at the UCLA center, and Len Finocchio, senior program officer at the health care foundation, said their findings raise concerns about the ability of public dental care programs and suggest that raising reimbursement rates to dentists and expanding the pool of providers might be needed.
The full report is available here.
PHOTO CREDIT: Children at Bates Elementary School in Courtland receive free dental care in a traveling dental van through the Healthy Families insurance program for low income children, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Sacramento Bee file photo / Lezlie Sterling
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