Dental Services Use Among Adults With Disabilities: Results From the 2015-2016 and 2017-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

OBJECTIVES

People with disabilities face many challenges in accessing dental care. We compared disparities in dental care patterns (ie, dental visits for preventive care or treatment) between adults with and without hearing, seeing, mobility, self-care, cognition, or independent living disabilities.

METHODS

We analyzed data from the 2015-2016 and 2017-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). For outcome variables, we included self-reported dental visit (yes/no) and preventive dental visit (yes/no) within the past year. NHANES asked participants whether they had serious difficulty in conducting any of the following 6 activities: hearing, seeing, mobility, self-care, cognition, or independent living; participants who answered yes to any of these activities were classified as disabled. Our analytic sample included 11 288 adult respondents aged ≥20 years. We used multiple logistic regression to assess the association between disability status-measured by any disability (yes/no), the 6 types of disabilities (yes/no), and the number of disabilities-and the outcome variables, with P ≤ .05 indicating significance.

RESULTS

Respondents with disabilities were less likely than those without a disability to have a preventive dental visit (adjusted odds ratio = 0.67; 95% CI, 0.59-0.77). Respondents with disabilities in mobility, self-care, or independent living were significantly less likely than those without any disability to have a dental visit. In addition, adults with more disabilities were significantly less likely than those without a disability to have a dental visit.

CONCLUSIONS

Access to preventive dental care was limited among people with disabilities. Further assistance, including providing dental insurance coverage, is needed to increase access to dental care among people with disabilities, especially those with mobility, self-care, and independent living disabilities.