Method: Teeth Tales is an exploratory trial implementing a community-based child oral health promotion intervention. This paper reports on child dental service use for the baseline cohort as a whole. Families from Iraqi, Lebanese and Pakistani backgrounds residing in metropolitan Melbourne with children aged 1-4 years were invited to participate in the study. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used by trained peer educators from the respective communities to recruit eligible participants into the study. Data was collected via a self-reported parent questionnaire including information on parent and child dental service use, oral health behaviours, knowledge, confidence and attitudes, and child dietary habits. Multivariable logistic regression adjusting for family clusters was conducted to identify independent predictors of child dental visits. Data were analysed using STATA 12.1.
Result: The analysis sample consisted of 625 children within 478 families. Most of the children had never been to a dentist (88%). Commonly reported dental visit barriers included cost (40%), long waiting lists (28%) and no reasons to visit the dentist (29%). In the multivariable logistic regression analysis ‘no reason for the child to visit the dentist’ remained the most significant predictor of a child dental visit. One in five children (20%) from this subgroup had caries.
Conclusion: Dental service use was very low among pre-school migrant children. This was influenced by parents’ perception that there was no reason for the child to visit the dentist. Our findings suggest the need to consider both parent oral health education and culturally competent strategies, such as targeted community outreach programs, improving organisational cultural competence and service accessibility, in order to engage and support migrant families to access dental services to improve oral health outcomes.