The National Institutes of Health Report Details 20 Years of Advances and Challenges of Americans’ Oral Health Which Plays a Central Role in Overall Health

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

NIH’s new report, Oral Health in America: Advances and Challenges, provides a road map on how to directions for improving oral health care and creating greater equity in oral health across communities. Achieving that equity is an ongoing challenge for many who struggle to obtain dental insurance and access to affordable care.

“This is a very significant report,” said NIH Acting Director Lawrence A. Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D. “It is the most comprehensive assessment of oral health currently available in the United States and it shows, unequivocally, that oral health plays a central role in overall health. Yet millions of Americans still do not have access to routine and preventative oral care.”

The newly issued report provides a comprehensive snapshot of oral health in America, including an examination of oral health across the lifespan and a look at the impact the issue has on communities and the economy. Major take-aways from the report include:

• Healthy behaviors can improve and maintain an individual’s oral health, but these behaviors are also shaped by social and economic conditions.
• Oral and medical conditions often share common risk factors, and just as medical conditions and their treatments can influence oral health, so can oral conditions and their treatments affect other health issues.
• Substance misuse and mental health conditions negatively affect the oral health of many.
• Group disparities around oral health, identified 20 years ago, have not been adequately addressed, and greater efforts are needed to tackle both the social and commercial determinants that create these inequities and the systemic biases that perpetuate them.

“This is an in-depth review of the scientific knowledge surrounding oral health that has accumulated over the last two decades,” said Rena D’Souza D.D.S., Ph.D., director of NIDCR, which oversaw and funded the project’s three-year research program. “It provides an important window into how many societal factors intersect to create advantages and disadvantages with respect to oral health, and, critically, overall health.”