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. 2012 Nov;18(6):1422-9.
doi: 10.1016/j.healthplace.2012.07.007. Epub 2012 Aug 13.

County-level determinants of dental utilization for Medicaid-enrolled children with chronic conditions: how does place affect use?

Donald L Chi  1 , Brian Leroux
Affiliations

County-level determinants of dental utilization for Medicaid-enrolled children with chronic conditions: how does place affect use?

Donald L Chi et al. Health Place. 2012 Nov.

Abstract

Little is known about how place affects childrens' access to dental care. We analyzed data for 25,908 Iowa Medicaid-enrolled children with chronic conditions to identify the county-level determinants of dental utilization. Our analyses suggest that higher levels of poverty and designation as a dental health professional shortage area at the county-level are associated with lower probability of child-level dental use. There are significant interactions between child-level race/ethnicity and county-level poverty as well as between child-level disability and county-level unemployment. We present a new descriptive model on dental utilization that emphasizes county-level factors as well as interactions between county-level and child-level factors.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Description of study findings regarding dental care utilization for Medicaid-enrolled children with chronic conditions with child-level factors and county-level factors.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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