Dental Care in Children With and Without Special Health Care Needs

University Of Washington, Seattle WA

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Abstract

[unreadable] DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The oral health of children with special needs is an understudied area. Little is known about their access to and utilization of dental care and how this compares to children without special needs. We plan to use the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data to describe and compare dental care access, utilization, expenditure and insurance coverage in children with and without special health care needs and to determine the effect of contextual and household variables on these factors. We hypothesize that CSHCN will have fewer dental visits overall and fewer preventive dental care visits relative to children without special needs. In addition, we hypothesize that CSHCN will require relatively more restorative dental care and thus have higher dental expenditures per dental visit and overall than children without special needs. [unreadable] [unreadable] [unreadable]