Healthcare Financial News

Recognizing the difficulties low-income people face in getting dental care, many communities are attempting to provide more dental services to vulnerable residents, according to a study released July 24 by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC).

Lack of dental care is the key contributor to oral health problems, with low-income people and some racial and ethnic minorities receiving fewer dental services than higher-income people and whites, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Poor oral health may contribute to other health problems, including heart and lung disease, stroke, and premature births.

Along with state efforts to increase dentists' participation in Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), hospitals, community health centers, health departments, dental schools, and others are working to expand dental services, according to the HSC study. The study’s findings are detailed in a new HSC issue brief, Community Efforts to Expand Dental Services for Low-Income People. The study is based on HSC’s 2007 site visits to 12 nationally representative metropolitan communities; HSC has been tracking change in these markets since 1996. Read the issue brief.

Women who receive a diagnosis of diabetes before they become pregnant are three to four times more likely to have a child with one or even multiple birth defects than a mother who is not diabetic, according to a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), released in the online issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.

The article from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study (NBDPS), “Diabetes Mellitus and Birth Defects,” shows that pregnant women with pregestational diabetes mellitus (prepregnancy diagnosis of diabetes, such as type 1 or type 2 diabetes) are more likely than a mother with no diabetes or a mother with gestational diabetes mellitus (pregnancy-induced diabetes) to have a child with various types of individual or multiple birth defects. This includes heart defects, defects of the brain and spine, oral clefts, defects of the kidneys and gastrointestinal tract, and limb deficiencies.

The associations of gestational diabetes with various birth defects were noted primarily among women who had prepregnancy obesity, which is a known risk factor for both diabetes and birth defects. In the United States, the prevalence of gestational diabetes has been increasing in recent years and currently affects about 7 percent of all pregnancies, resulting in more than 200,000 cases annually. Read the study report.