New Federal Study Confirms Ongoing Disparities in Children’s Oral Health & Dental Care

A new federal report on children’s oral health was released by the Maternal and Child Health Bureau in April 2006. The report, The Oral Health of Children: A Portrait of States and the Nation 2005, provides information on parental reports of the condition of children’s teeth, problems with teeth, use of preventive dental care, and reasons for not receiving needed dental care. The Oral Health of Children is published as a chartbook that provides tables and graphs of data from interviews of more than 100,000 parents with children under age 17 years. It is available on the web at http://www.mchb.hrsa.gov/oralhealth/index.htm.