Accessing to Dental Services and Dental Health Status of Local Government Officers at Huai Mek District, Kalasin Province

Abstract

This cross-sectional descriptive study aimed to investigate the access to dental services and dental health status of local government officers at Huai Mek district, Kalasin province. The samples were 209 local government officers who were selected by Simple random sampling. Data were collected using questionnaires. The reliability of questionnaires representing by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient was 0.820. Data were analyzed by using software package STATA for Windows analysis in terms of frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation and Multiple logistic regressions.

The results showed that most of the samples were female (63.64%), 43.54% aged 31-40 years ((x ̅) = 39.78 years, S.D. = 8.81), 39.23% of income between 10,001 and 20,000 baht ((x ̅) = 18,231.61 baht, S.D. = 8834.58) and 46.63% graduated with a bachelor's degree. Almost 60% of the sample married, 63.64% of them were government official, 49.76% had working period between 1-10 years ((x ̅) = 10.27 years, S.D. = 6.20) and 85.65% of them had no medical diseases. Those with medical conditions involved high blood pressure, diabetes, thyroid, asthma, allergies, etc. The sample had access to dental services at high and moderate levels about 44.98% and 49.76, respectively. There were 16.27% of the sample who bewared of their oral condition. Most of them used their civil servant benefits for dental treatment. In the last year, 48.80 % of the sample went to dental services. Dental services were mostly used at community hospitals accounted for 98.04%.

An educational level and distance from home to regularly used dental clinic were related to the access to services of local government officers In Huai Mek district. The samples with a bachelor's degree or higher had access to dental services 2.04 times when compared to those with less than a bachelor's degree (ORadj = 2.04, 95%CI = 1.01 to 4.09). The samples whose houses were near the dental clinic were about 0.31 times to use dental services when compared to those who lived far from the service facility (ORadj = 0.31, 95%CI = 0.17 to 0.58).