Factors contributing to socioeconomic gradients in children's oral health between 1993 and 2003

NHMRC和澳大利亚国家口腔健康计划已将健康不平等确定为一个关键的健康问题。儿童的龋齿日益集中在弱势群体中。虽然之前的研究已经记录了口腔健康的社会经济梯度，但很少有人试图解释这些不平等背后的原因。通过利用1992年和2002年在澳大利亚收集的两个现有的儿童口腔健康数据集，我们将能够量化口腔健康中社会经济不平等的变化，并确定可能促成这一变化的预防做法和社会环境对整个人口的影响。

The NHMRC and the Australian National Oral Health Plan have identified health inequalities as a critical health issue. Dental caries in children increasingly has become concentrated in disadvantaged population groups. While previous studies have documented socioeconomic gradients in oral health, few have sought to explain the reasons underlying those inequalities. By taking advantage of two existing datasets of child oral health in Australia, collected in 1992 and 2002, we will be able to quantify change in socioeconomic inequalities in oral health, and identify population-wide exposures to preventive practices and social circumstances that may have contributed to that change.