The Association Between Economic Status and Religious Identity With Oral Health Disparities and Inequalities Around the World

Farooq Ahmad Chaudhary; Basaruddin Ahmad; Bilal Arjumand; Hamad Mohammad Alharkan

doi:10.7759/cureus.51917

The Association Between Economic Status and Religious Identity With Oral Health Disparities and Inequalities Around the World

Cureus. 2024 Jan 8;16(1):e51917. doi: 10.7759/cureus.51917. eCollection 2024 Jan.

Authors

Farooq Ahmad Chaudhary¹, Basaruddin Ahmad², Bilal Arjumand³, Hamad Mohammad Alharkan³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Community Dentistry, School of Dentistry, Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University, Islamabad, PAK.
² Department of Dental Public Health, School of Dental Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Kota Bharu, MYS.
³ Department of Conservative Dental Sciences and Endodontics, College of Dentistry, Qassim University, Buraydah, SAU.

Abstract

Introduction: The inequalities in oral health remain one of the current issues in the global public health agenda. The number of studies investigating health disparity by religious identity is limited and there is currently no such report relating to oral health. Similarly, there is compelling evidence for oral health disparities between socioeconomic statuses, education levels, and ethnic groups. This ecological study aimed to explore the disparity in oral health-related outcomes between Muslim and non-Muslim countries and country income status.

Methods: Publicly available data related to oral health measures, country income status, and membership in the Organization of Islamic countries were used. Five oral health-related measures were examined: caries experience (decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT)), percentage of the population with no periodontal disease, and disability-adjusted life years (DALY) attributed to oral conditions, and mouth and oropharynx cancer. One-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare the oral health parameters by country income status and simple linear regression was used to compare the parameters between the non-member countries (n-MC) and member countries (MC). For the significant parameters, adjusted coefficients were obtained using multiple linear regression.

Results: From 170 countries included, 53 (31%) were MC and 117 (69%) were n-MC. Analysis showed that the mean DMFT in adults aged 35-44 years was significantly higher in the n-MC compared to MC after adjusting for country income status (p<0.05) but the latter was the stronger explanatory predictor of the outcome. The strength of the effect of country membership classification (standardized coefficient β: DMFT_{35-44-year-old} = -0.16) was smaller than country income status (β = -0.60) in the multiple regression.

Conclusion: There is significant but weak evidence from the available data to support the claim that economic status and religion contribute to oral health disparity.

Keywords: disparity; oral health; periodontal status; religion; socioeconomic status (ses).