Methods: Beginning in the 2009 school year, the state of Iowa implemented a law requiring dental screenings for incoming kindergartners, 9thgraders and transfer students. The law’s goal is to identify and refer children with unmet dental treatment. For this study, data were collected for 1,104 kindergartners in 18 schools in the Iowa City School district, a community in which ~30% of students are FRL eligible. Dental treatment need, gender, birthdate, screening provider type, and date of screening were part of the standardized form. FRL eligibility and race were provided by the school district. Bivariate analyses were performed to explore the association of dental treatment needs and the following covariates: a student’s FRL eligibility, gender, race, age and screening provider type. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05.
Results: Mean age of children (47.1% female and 33.7% non-caucasian) was 4.9±0.6 years, with 11.2% of the screened children requiring dental treatment. Either a dentist or a dental hygienist screened more than 90% of kindergartners. Bivariate analysis indicated that Kindergartners who required dental treatment were more likely to be non-white (p<0.0001), ≥5-years old (p=0.0110), FRL-eligible (p<0.0001), and screened by either a dentist or dental hygienist (p=0.0023).
Conclusions: Public health programs generally target schools with a high percentage of FRL-eligible students. In most instances, however, information about the individual's FRL-eligibility is not available. This study revalidates that dental treatment need is related to FRL eligibility at the individual level.