Calibration of Self-Reported Oral Health to Clinically Determined Standard

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Oral health is vital to a person's overall health, and yet the incidence and prevalence of dental problems and oral diseases remain quite high. Statistics show that severe gum disease affects almost 15% of adults, and a large proportion of adults show at least some signs of gum disease. Furthermore, preliminary evidence also indicates that oral health is closely related to systemic diseases through a number of routes such as blood circulation; due the complexity involved with the process and procedures of clinical encounters and the increasing overall costs of health care, dental exam and treatment are more complicated and expensive. The reality is that underserved populations do not have the ability to identify a usual source of care, lack dental insurance to support the provision of care, and are burdened by competing needs. Self-report is the most efficient, non-invasive and cost-effective method for obtaining patient health outcomes and would be ideal for evaluating oral health status, particularly for oral health screening with large populations. However, due to factors such as personal perceptions, cultural background, competing priorities with existing systemic diseases, and the level of understanding of the importance of oral health, self-reported oral health status often differs significantly from clinically determined oral health status. This discrepancy between self-reported and clinically determined oral health status severely limits the direct use of self-reported oral health in dental examination, treatment, prevention, and research. Therefore, methods and tools that can leverage and calibrate self- reported oral health measures to clinically determine oral health standards would be particularly valuable in dental care. To create such useful tools, we propose to use the nationally representative oral health data of National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) to: (1) evaluate the distribution of self-reported oral health, clinically determined oral health, and general overall health; (2) evaluate the relationship between the aforementioned health measures as well as the relationship between those measures and subject characteristics; (3) create summarized indices for self-report and clinical assessment that can objectively and completely measure oral health; (3) analyze the discrepancies between self-reported and clinically determined oral health and identify the determinants of these discrepancies; and (4) create and select optimal calibration models and tools that can calibrate self-reported oral health to the standard of clinically determined oral health. Project Narrative: Using nationally representative oral health data, this study examines the discrepancy between self-reported and clinically determined oral health, identifies the determinants of the discrepancy, and creates models and tools that can calibrate self-reported oral health measures to clinically determined standards. The models and tools created in this study will be particularly useful in federal, state and local oral health screening programs, dental prevention and research with large populations, and can save a significant amount of resources in dental care.