Predictors of Dental Care Services Before and After the onset of the Covid-19 Pandemic among undergraduates at a U.S. University

Author(s): Alvarez V, Short JL, Weinstein AA, Deakin TK, Mejia PJ, Maciarz J, Dhaliwal SK, Lokko F, Farid Azar S, De Jonge E, Cheskin LJ.

Objective: To analyze predictors of dental service use over 2 years among students aged 18-24 at a large public university.

Methods: Participants were 349 first-year students from the 2019 cohort of the Mason Health Starts Here longitudinal study. We examined measures of enabling or impeding factors, such as health resources, family characteristics, psychological functioning, health behaviors, and self-rated health to predict receipt of dental services in 2019 and 2021.

Results: Approximately 75% of students received dental exams in the year before entering college (pre-pandemic) and 74% reported dental exams two years later, after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a trend for females to receive more dental services than males after the onset of the pandemic, not before. We found significant relationships between receiving dental exams and eye exams, physical exams, possessing health insurance, self-rated health, and anxiety. Receiving eye exams, health insurance, and self-rated health explained significant unique variance in receiving dental exams at time 1 (T1). T1 dental exams correlated significantly with completing dental exams two years later. Receiving dental exams, financial support from parents, and a sense of hope explained significant unique variance in self-rated health at T1.

Conclusions: Health behaviors of completing multiple types of medical exams, resources such as health insurance, and psychological characteristics such as self-rated health and anxiety were related to completing dental exams. Increased access to health insurance and habitual use of medical services were found to help enable and motivate increased use of preventive dental services.