Preventive dental visiting: a critical interpretive synthesis of theory explaining how inequalities arise

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

Positive experiences from dental visits, particularly for those patients from low socioeconomic status, feed into future 'help-seeking behaviour'.

Main

Harris RV, Pennington A et al. Community Dent Oral Epidemiol 2017; 45: 120–134

The aim of this systematic review was to look for links between socioeconomic inequalities in early dental visiting, and to identify potential intervention points. Not unexpectedly, it was found that dental visiting is influenced by the 'importance of obtaining care', and 'perceived control'. But this is balanced by other demands including 'affordability and availability of services'. The message from these authors is that there is a complex interplay between the individual in their social setting (micro-level), shaped by communities or organisations (meso-level) that drives the intention to seek care. But then this can be ruinously disrupted by changes in economic interactions (macro-level).