Association of integration with oral health among Indian migrants living in the Netherlands

Amandeep Pabbla; Charles Agyemang; Geert van der Heijden; Denise Duijster

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0298768

Association of integration with oral health among Indian migrants living in the Netherlands

PLoS One. 2024 Mar 7;19(3):e0298768. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0298768. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Amandeep Pabbla¹, Charles Agyemang^{2

3}, Geert van der Heijden¹, Denise Duijster¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Oral Public Health, Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA), University of Amsterdam and VU University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
² Department of Public Health, Academic Medical Centre (AMC), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
³ Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.

Abstract

Background: Limited data exist about the relationship between acculturation and oral health. Hence, the aim of this study was to assess the association of integration with self-reported oral health, behaviours, and oral healthcare utilization among Indian migrants living in the Netherlands, a cross sectional survey study.

Methods: Between February and April 2021, a random sample from Dutch municipalities was obtained for the Indian migrants living in the Netherlands (n = 147). A validated questionnaire was used to collect information on independent variables, namely socio-demographic, integration assessment tool: Immigration Policy Lab (IPL-12) and everyday discrimination scale (EDS). The outcome variables were self-reported oral health, oral health behaviours, and oral healthcare utilization. Multiple regression analysis was used to assess the associations.

Results: Higher integration among Indian migrants was associated with longer stay in the Netherlands, having a Dutch passport, intention to settle in the Netherlands, and having a permanent residence. After adjusting for covariates such as age, gender, marital status, education, income, occupation, and dental insurance, regression analysis showed that Indians with higher integration had lower odds of reporting their oral health as fair to poor [OR = 0.92(95%CI:0.0.85;0.99)] than the Indians with low integration scores. Also, Indians with higher integration had lower odds of using a manual toothbrush as compared to an electric toothbrush or use of both [OR = 0.86(95%CI:0.76;0.97)]. Highly integrated Indians had lower odds of consuming Indian sweets than lower integrated Indians (OR = 0.91; 95%CI:0.86;0.97). Indians with higher integration had 1.15 times (95% CI:1.03;1.29) higher odds of visiting a Dutch dental professional than visiting a dentist in both places (India and the Netherlands). No significant association was found between discrimination and the three outcome variables.

Conclusion: Integration is positively association with self-reported oral health outcomes among the Indian migrants. Measure to improve integration among Indian migrants may help to promote healthy oral health behaviours and improve their oral health care utilization.

Copyright: © 2024 Pabbla et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

MeSH terms

Cross-Sectional Studies
Emigration and Immigration
Humans
Netherlands
Oral Health
Transients and Migrants*

Grants and funding

This paper is a part of the PhD thesis project and AP received the grant from ’Amsterdam Public Health research institute’ (APH), Amsterdam and ‘Amsterdam university fund’, Amsterdam for carrying out this research. APH url https://www.amsterdamumc.org/en/research/institutes/amsterdam-public-health.htm Amsterdam university fund url https://www.auf.nl/en Grant number: 3550 awarded to Amandeep Pabbla The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.