Association of food insecurity with early childhood caries

Abstract

Objectives The aim of this study was to examine the association of food insecurity on the prevalence of dental caries in preschool children. Methods Eighty‐two children, aged 12‐71 months old, from the Marquette University School of Dentistry Community South Clinic and their caregivers participated in this cross‐sectional study. Following informed consent, parents completed the validated six‐item US Department of Agriculture food insecurity questionnaire and questions regarding demographic information and family structure. Upon clinical examination caries was recorded using the decayed, missing, filled teeth (dmft) index based on the International Caries Detection and Assessment System criteria. Results The correlation between dmft and food insecurity was found statistically significant (P = 0.002, R2 = 0.115), and children of higher food insecurity demonstrated higher levels of dental caries. Food insecurity was also positively correlated with parental age (P = 0.034), whereby higher levels of food insecurity were associated with the father being less than 25 years of age. Results from the questionnaire revealed that 58.5 percent of the families were fully secure, 11.0 percent had marginal, 24.4 percent had low, and 6.1 percent had very low food security. Results from clinical examination reported dmft 4.09 ± 4.38, dt 2.20 ± 2.83, and ft 1.83 ± 2.95. Most of the children (79.7 percent) were Hispanic, 53.1 percent were female and the median age of the sample was 48 months. Conclusions Results of the present study suggest that preschool children with food insecurity have higher levels of dental caries.

Early childhood oral health promotion for First Nations and Métis communities and caregivers in Manitoba

“…Other barriers are a lack of oral health awareness, social determinants of health and caregiver hygiene behaviours for children aged less than 72 months. 5,7 Increasing caregivers' awareness can help modify behaviours known to contribute to early childhood caries. 8,9 The Healthy Smile Happy Child (HSHC) initiative has taken a community development approach to promoting young children's oral health.…”

Household food insecurity and school readiness among preschool-aged children in the USA

“…Importantly, this public health issue does not bypass families with particularly young children, given that more than 16 % of households with children under the age of 6 years experienced food insecurity in 2017 (3) . Research to date has linked household food insecurity to myriad deleterious health outcomes among young children, including elevated BMI/obesity (4,5) , asthma (6) and dental caries (7) . The impact of household food insecurity, however, extends beyond these physical health challenges to diverse psychological, academic and behavioural challenges, including among very young children (8)(9)(10)(11)(12) .…”

Associations between early childhood caries, malnutrition and anemia: a global perspective

“…The higher prevalence of overweight in countries with higher estimates of ECC in 0-2-year-olds may reflect the findings by El Tantawi et al [26] who reported a higher prevalence of ECC in countries with greater economic growth. ECC and overweight/obesity share common risk factorshigh frequency and quantity of free sugar consumption [36], food insecurity [37,38], low socioeconomic status [39][40][41], residence in urban slums [42,43] and rural areas [44,45]. Growing economies are most likely to be undergoing nutrition transitions from traditional diets to low quality, processed, high-sugar, high-fat, carbohydrate-dense food and beverages that are poor in micronutrients [46,47], which predisposes to overweight and high ECC prevalence.…”