Research conducted by HRSA’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau found that adolescents without health insurance, with low family income, and whose parents have low education levels are significantly less likely to get regular preventive medical and dental care.

“Factors Associated with Use of Preventive Dental and Health Services Among U.S. Adolescents,” by Stella Yu, Sc.D., Ann Drum, D.D.S., and others, appears in the December issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.  Researchers used the 1994-96 National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which surveys teens, to examine the relationships between the use of preventive health and dental services and demographic characteristics of the adolescents and their parents.

Study findings indicate:

·        Approximately a third of adolescents who responded to the survey had not had a physical examination in the year before the survey.  The same percentage of respondents had not had a dental checkup.

·        Nearly 12 percent of the adolescents in the survey had no health insurance.  These teens were nearly twice as likely as insured teens not to have had a medical visit in the previous year and more than twice as likely not to have had a dental exam.

·        Black and Hispanic adolescents were more likely to lack dental care than white adolescents. 

·        Adolescents born outside the United States were more likely never to have had a dental exam than teens born in the U.S.

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