December 2015

Objective: To identify barriers to children’s access to dental care. Basic research design: A cross-sectional health survey. Setting: All residential census tracts in Genesee County, Michigan, USA. Participants: 498 adults who reported having children in their households, extracted from 2,932 randomly selected adult participants in the 2009 and 2011 surveys. Main measures: Stepwise logistic regression was used to predict two dependent variables: children’s lack of any visits to dentists’ offices and unmet dental care needs (defined as needing dental care but not receiving it due to cost) in the previous year as reported by the adults. Independent variables included gender, age, education, race/ethnicity, financial planning, financial distress, fear of crime, stress, depressive symptoms, experiences of discrimination, and neighbourhood social capital. Results: Of the 498 adults, 29.9% reported that they had children who had not visited a dentist in the past 12 months and 13% reported that they had household children with unmet dental care needs in the past year. Adults who reported higher depressive symptoms, lower neighbourhood social capital, greater financial distress, and who were younger were more likely to have household children who did not visit a dentist in the past year. Financial distress was the only significant predictor when controlling for other variables to predict unmet dental care needs. Conclusions: Factors beyond financial distress affect children’s dental care; these include parental depressive symptoms and lower neighbourhood social capital. Interventions promoting parental mental health and social integration may increase dental care among children. Key words: dental care, children, caregivers, financial distress, depressive symptoms, social capital, USA