Family's socioeconomic and demographic factors on elements of children's dental and oral health: A scoping review.

BACKGROUND

Family plays a significant role in children's dental and oral health (DOH) elements, such as children's DOH knowledge and practice, the development of children's dental fear and anxiety (DFA), children's dental visits, and children's DOH status. The study aims to address the interrelationship of these elements based on individual and familial socioeconomic and demographic (SED) attributes.

METHODS

Given the possibility that the COVID-19 epidemic might alter oral health and disrupt dental care, a systematic literature search from the Scopus and Web of Science library database was limited to the 2017-2019 peer-reviewed published literature, which includes quantitative studies that investigated at whether SED status contributed to children's DOH elements. Four sets of keywords are combined in both library database literature searches. Using the PRISMA-ScR Checklist as a reference, we conduct this scoping review.

RESULTS

A total of 15 studies were included. Studies were from Brazil, Iran, China, India, Indonesia, Peru, Portugal, and UK. The socioeconomic characteristics include parental education, income, employment, assets and home ownership, type of residence, and health insurance coverage. The demographic characteristics include parent's age, children's age, the number of family members, and family type. There were 13 studies observing parent's education, seven examining family income, four identifying parental employment, three measuring family assets, six assessing the type of residence, and one recording health insurance coverage. Few studies assessed socioeconomic proxies such as school type, free school lunches, and social networks. In addition, race, the number of household members, the number of children, and family type were measured in at least one of the literature.

CONCLUSION

Family SED characteristics may define a pathway to children's DOH elements.