Racism and oral health inequities; An overview

Oral health is uniquely positioned to reflect both contemporary and cumulative race-based health inequities. For example, the most common clinical measure of dental caries experience, the Decayed, Missing or Filled Teeth (DMFT) index, may be used to simultaneously present current inequities in experience of dental disease (D), as well as past exposure to inequitable treatment of that disease that is either radical (M) or conservative (F) across the life course. In so doing, this index captures the cumulative effect of racism operating at various societal levels, including race-based discrimination in dental care. Current evidence at a global level shows that: (i) racially marginalized groups often bear the greatest burden of oral diseases and; (ii) racial inequities in oral health persist over time and across space [1].