Self-reported Dental Health of Hmong Adults and Children in a Thai Village: a Descriptive Cohort Study

Objectives: Describe Hmong adults and children’s dental status in one Thailand village. Methods: Population-based cross-sectional study to evaluate adults’ and children’s dental status, demographics, and behaviors. Quantitative analysis of survey by descriptive, bivariate and multivariate statistics. Qualitative description of open-ended questions and reflection of participant observations. Results: 37.8% of village adults and 52.2% of village children participated. Of 232 adults, 57.8% had fair/poor self-reported dental status—related to female gender, low formal education, earning occupations and fair/poor self-reported physical health (p<0.05). Toothbrushing daily or less had a non-significant trend for fair/poor dental status. Of 155 children, 58.9% had poor/fair dental status—related to less toothbrushing (p<0.05), poor physical health (p<0.001) and paradoxically, consuming less sweets per day (p<0.05). Logistic regressions revealed education for adults and physical health for children were the most important factors for dental health. Qualitative reflection placed the results in historical sociocultural-economic contexts. Conclusion: These baseline observational results highlight the need for additional dental health education and services.