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Disparities in Preventive Dental Care Among Children in Georgia

ORIGINAL RESEARCH — Volume 14 — October 26, 2017

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A map of Georgia shows variations in the percentage of children with financial access to preventive dental care, including children privately or publicly insured. Few census tracts have a percentage larger than 90%. Few census tracts have a percentage lower than 60%. Communities with a low percentage of children with financial access are in both rural and urban communities across the state.

Figure 1.
Percentage of children with financial access to preventive dental care in each census tract. Financial access is the percentage of children who either are eligible for public insurance or have the ability to afford dental care through commercial insurance or ability to pay out-of-pocket.

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Figure 2.
Median values of the percentage of met need, travel distance, and scarcity of dentists in rural and urban census tracts, by dentists’ Medicaid/CHIP acceptance ratio. Scarcity was calculated as the patient caseload served by dentists divided by maximum patient caseload capacity; higher values indicate greater scarcity of dentists. The vertical dashed line at 28% represents the current rate of providers participating in public insurance programs. Abbreviation: CHIP, Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Measure of Access by Dentists’ Medicaid/CHIP Acceptance Ratio Rural–Private Rural–Public Urban–Private Urban–Public
Percentage of met need
20% 100.0 21.7 100.0 46.7
28% 100.0 24.3 100.0 78.5
38% 100.0 24.3 100.0 78.5
50% 100.0 77.5 100.0 91.0
60% 100.0 83.5 100.0 100.0
70% 100.0 88.1 100.0 100.0
80% 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
Scarcity of providers
20% 0.39 0.94 0.43 0.83
28% 0.42 0.92 0.47 0.65
38% 0.42 0.92 0.47 0.65
50% 0.66 0.77 0.55 0.55
60% 0.70 0.73 0.58 0.50
70% 0.71 0.71 0.61 0.49
80% 0.73 0.65 0.60 0.47
Travel distance, miles
20% 4.45 38.93 0.44 19.15
28% 4.55 37.93 0.44 12.61
38% 4.55 37.93 0.44 12.61
50% 4.55 24.10 0.45 8.81
60% 4.55 23.28 0.45 6.97
70% 4.55 21.52 0.45 5.06
80% 4.56 20.18 0.45 3.80

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