Oral Health Literacy

Judith Haber's picture
Submitted by Judith Haber on Jul 28, 2014 - 10:44am CDT

Resource Type: 
Report

Oral health and oral health literacy are the focus of interest at the national level as demonstrated in the recommendations from two recent IOM reports and in the objectives of Healthy People 2020 (HHS, 2010a; IOM, 2011a,b). Although the field of oral health literacy is less well developed than health literacy, the roundtable was interested in exploring findings from research in this area and how such findings are being translated into oral health practice. In addition, the Roundtable was interested in the intersection between oral health literacy and health literacy. It has been established that limited health literacy is associated with inaccurate knowledge about preventive measures such as water fluoridation, dental care visits, dental caries severity, and oral health–related quality of life. For example, nationally only “44 percent of adults with less than basic health literacy skills had a dental visit in the preceding year compared with 77 percent of those with proficient health literacy skills” (Rozier, 2012).

Author(s): 
Institute of Medicine (IOM)
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