Primary Submission Category: Structural factors
The Social Determinants of Periodontal Disease Across the Life Course
Authors: Jessie Himmelstern John Rob Warren Ryan Demmer Chandra Muller Eric Grodsky
Presenting Author: Jessie Himmelstern*
Periodontal disease, an infection and inflammation of the gums and bones around the teeth, is one of the most pervasive and understudied health issues in the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 47.2 percent of individuals aged 30 and over have periodontal disease (Eke et al. 2012, 2015). Although an important health condition in its own right, periodontal disease is also linked to a variety of subsequent physical health and cognitive outcomes. Unfortunately, we currently know very little about the social, educational, economic, or other upstream factors that stratify periodontal disease outcomes; what do know does not typically come from large, diverse, nationally representative samples. We use a nationally representative longitudinal study to model the demographic, spatial, educational, social, and economic factors across the life course that intersect to shape risk of periodontal disease at midlife. We leverage data from the High School and Beyond cohort, which is a large (n=~25,500), diverse, nationally representative sample of Americans followed from high school in 1980 through age ~60 in 2021/2022. Our preliminary results indicate that individuals who identify as Latinx; who live in the west; who have ever smoked or who are current smokers; who are obese; and/or who have had diabetes for 10 or more years have higher risk of periodontal disease at midlife. The results also indicate that higher childhood family income and higher high school vocabulary test scores are associated with reduced odds of having periodontitis.