Sarah Raskin, PhD, MPH: No financial relationships to disclose
Abstract: Background: Researchers conduct spatial analyses to characterize structural inequities that underlie health disparities along geographic lines. For example, residential segregation, or biased housing exclusions formalized through public policy and maintained through social norms, is associated with disproportionately high prevalence of hypertension, poor glycemic control, COVID-19 severity, and other conditions in majority Black, Latinx, and American Indian/Alaska Native communities. Equity-based spatial analyses can also guide the distribution of health care resources. Yet spatial analyses are seldom utilized in oral health research.
Objective: This study aims to identify associations between residential segregation and dental utilization outcomes among adult dental patients in a statewide network of dental safety net providers in Florida.
Methods: We geocoded patient record data using a spatial-weighted measure of residential segregation at the census tract level. We extracted treatment outcomes and categorized them as follows: preventive visits completed; procedural visits completed; incomplete treatment plans. We calculated descriptive statistics, correlations, and multilevel regressions.
Results: Initial analyses suggest that we will find that greater degree of residential segregation is associated with incomplete treatment plans and that lesser degree of residential segregation is associated with preventive visits completed, even after controlling for demographic variables. Analyses are ongoing.
Conclusions: Residential segregation is an underlying factor in oral health outcomes, including the type and completion of services needed, even within a relatively economically homogenous patient population. Dental safety net providers can use spatial analyses to optimize service delivery distribution attentive to limited resources, for example the placement of outreach, engagement, and community-based care.
Source of Funding: CareQuest Institute for Oral Health
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