This entry was posted on 1/16/2008 5:27 PM and is filed under ARTICLES.
Good oral health promotes not just dental health but general health. According to the Academy of General Dentistry, more than 90 percent of systemic diseases including diabetes, cancer and stroke have oral manifestations that are detectable during oral examinations.
Oral health is also related to one’s general well-being and quality of life as measured along functional, psychosocial and economic dimensions. Diet, nutrition, sleep, psychological status, social interaction, school and work all are affected by impaired oral health.
Oral health is more than healthy teeth. Indeed, any health care reform package considered by the Colorado legislature should include an oral health component that will protect and improve the overall health status of all Coloradans.
To its credit, Colorado’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform has recognized that public programs for oral health need to be enhanced from both a service and reimbursement perspective. The Commission’s proposed recommendations reflect that oral health can no longer be seen as separate from overall health. It realizes that the impact of poor oral health on our Colorado children, adults and seniors is too serious to ignore.
Although Colorado has made substantial progress in improving the oral health of its residents, significant disparities remain, including access to known preventive measures, the impact of various risk factors and the utilization of benefits: . In Colorado an estimated 7.8 million hours of school are lost annually due to oral pain and suffering due to untreated diseases which affect children’s ability to concentrate and learn. Low-income children suffer nearly 12 times more restricted-activity days due to poor oral health than children from higher-income families.
Tooth decay, the most prevalent chronic childhood diseases in American today, is 100 percent preventable. Yet, many parents in Colorado have trouble finding or affording dental care for their children.
Employed adults lose more than 164 million hours of work each year due to dental disease or dental visits.
42 percent of adults in Colorado do not have dental insurance.
Only 30 percent of seniors age 65 and over have any type of dental insurance.
Periodontal disease, a disease of the gums, afflicts more than 30 percent of the adult population. It is often under-diagnosed and under-treated, despite mounting evidence of its relationship to systemic diseases such as diabetes, pre-term, low-birth weight babies, and cardiovascular diseases...
