Graduate Program in Public Health, Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil.
Australian Research Centre for Population Oral Health, Adelaide Dental School, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia.
Community Dent Health. 2021 May 28;38(2):132-137. doi: 10.1922/CDH_IADRBastos06.
This article combines a review of dental studies on race with sociological insights into systemic racism to advance a counter-narrative on the root causes of racial oral health inequities. Taking racism as a form of oppression that cuts across institutional, cultural, and behavioral dimensions of social life, we ask: How pervasive are racial inequities in the occurrence of adverse oral health outcomes? What is the direction and magnitude of racial inequities in oral health? Does the inequitable distribution of negative outcomes persist over time? How can sociological frameworks on systemic racism inform initiatives to effectively reduce racial oral health inequities? The first three questions are addressed by reviewing dental studies conducted in the past few years around the globe. The fourth question is addressed by framing racial oral health inequities around sociological scholarship on racism as a systemic feature of contemporary societies. The paper concludes with a set of practical recommendations on how to eliminate racial oral health inequities, which include engaging with a strong anti-racist narrative and actively dismantling the race discrimination system. Amid the few attempts at moving the field towards improved racial justice, this paper should be followed by research on interventions against racial oral health inequities, including the conditions under which they succeed.
本文将牙科领域关于种族的研究与社会学中对系统性种族主义的洞察结合起来，提出了一个关于种族性口腔健康不平等根源的反叙事。我们将种族主义视为一种压迫形式，它贯穿社会生活的制度、文化和行为层面，从而提出以下问题：在不良口腔健康结果的发生中，种族不平等现象有多普遍？口腔健康方面的种族不平等现象的方向和程度是什么？负面结果的不平等分配是否会随着时间的推移而持续存在？关于系统性种族主义的社会学框架如何为有效减少种族性口腔健康不平等的举措提供信息？通过回顾过去几年在全球范围内进行的牙科研究，回答了前三个问题。第四个问题是通过围绕作为当代社会系统性特征的种族主义的社会学学术来构建种族性口腔健康不平等问题来解决的。本文最后提出了一系列消除种族性口腔健康不平等的实际建议，其中包括参与强有力的反种族主义叙事和积极拆除种族歧视制度。在少数试图推动该领域实现更大种族正义的尝试中，本文之后应跟进关于种族性口腔健康不平等干预措施的研究，包括它们成功的条件。
