Prevalence of dental caries in white and black children in Nelson County, Virginia, a rural southern community.

Until a few years ago, the results of most surveys of the prevalence of dental caries among school-age children in the United States, particularly those done in the south, showed that black children had a lower prevalence of dental caries than did white children who lived in the same community.4-6,11,16,19,20-23,25 However, in several recent surveys, the formerly observed race-caries relation has not been detected.2,8,17,18,26 In connection with a study initiated in 1972 in Nelson County, Virginia to determine the effectiveness of a combination of self-applied procedures for the administration of fluoride, baseline data on dental caries experience were collected for 1,374 white and 761 black children attending the County's public schools. The availability of data for large numbers of white and black children prompted a cross-racial comparison of prevalence of dental caries. Findings of the comparative analysis are contained in this report.