INTEREST GROUP SESSION - ORAL HEALTH: ORAL HEALTH AND DENTAL CARE AMONG MIDDLE-AGED AND OLDER ADULTS IN THE UNITED STATES: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE CAN DO

摘要

Oral health is an integrated element of general health. This symposium provides rich and state-of-the-art research findings on dental service use and oral health status among middle-aged and older adults in the U.S. Using the 2006–2014 Health and Retirement Survey (HRS), the first presentation examines intra-person trajectories of dental services use among older Americans across racial/ethnic groups. The results showed that as people aged, their dental services utilization declined and this trend was more evident for Blacks and Hispanics than for Whites. Furthermore, paradoxical findings on services use by nativity (Foreign vs. Native born) were found. Using the HRS data, the second presentation estimated trajectories of cognitive function as related to baseline oral health. Results from growth trajectory models indicated that poor oral health was consistently related to cognitive health over the observation period. The third paper presents findings from a 2017 online survey on oral health, dental care and coverage from a national, probability-based sample of U.S. adults age 50–64. Three in five (60%) adults reported getting regular dental care. Nearly one in four (23%) reported going to the dentist only for serious dental problems. The fourth paper presents qualitative results from an oral health intervention study. This study found that individuals with mild dementia (IMD) could learn new oral-hygiene skills when learning at their own pace. Carepartners developed strategies to work with IMD to improve communication, create routines, and provide solutions to many challenges that IMD and their carepartners face.