Oral health is essential to general health. It encompasses a person’s ability to perform actions of the mouth without pain, disease, or discomfort (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000). Oral diseases disproportionately affect low-income populations including those living in the U.S. without citizenship status (World Health Organization, 2020).This study is a secondary data analysis using the 2017-2018 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) dataset. This dataset was collected from randomly sampled non-institutionalized individuals living in the U.S.. Our sample population was n=5,545 participants after all exclusions were applied. The independent variable was U.S. citizenship status and the dependent variable was oral health status. Potential confounders included age, sex, body mass index (BMI), smoking, education, race, and access to oral health care. Bivariate and chi square analyses were performed to assess the relationship between the exposure variable, the outcome variable, and the confounding variables. This study aimed to examine the relationship between U.S. citizenship status and oral health status. Statistical significance was found in bivariate and unadjusted odds ratio analyses between U.S. citizenship status and oral health status. However, significance was lost after adjusting for confounders. It was found that 87.3% of individuals who rated their oral health as good were U.S. citizens. Education, race, and access to oral health were determined to be the most influential confounders affecting the significance of the results. In the future, researchers should look into socioeconomic status as another potential confounding variable. Further, Medicaid’s lack of dental coverage has the potential to impact access to oral health care and thus oral health and should be explored.
Authors: Anna Bloomquist, Danielle Wilcox, Carolyn Lucyshyn
Advisor: Saruna Ghimire, Sociology and Gerontology
You must be logged in to post a comment.