Stark north and south difference in dental health

A new report has found that there is a worrying divide in good dental health between northern and southern England, with children in deprived areas more likely to have rotten teeth.

Root causes: quality and inequality in dental health, published by the Nuffield Trust and the Health Foundation, revealed that dental health is generally better in the south and east of England and poorer in the north of England.

For example, children from Blackburn were four times more likely to have missing, decayed or filled teeth than children in South Gloucestershire in 2015: just 44 per cent of children in Blackburn were free from decay compared with 86 per cent in South Gloucestershire. Furthermore, hospitalisation for tooth extractions in the under 10s was five times higher in Yorkshire than in the East of England in 2015/16.

In addition to the regional divide, the report highlights a consistent gap between the dental health of the rich and poor, with deprived groups more likely to require hospital treatment and parents of children eligible for free school meals finding it harder to access a dentist.

Professor John Appleby, chief economist at the Nuffield Trust, said: “As a nation our dental health is improving, but it is shocking that your income or where you live can still determine your dental health, how likely you are to be hospitalised with dental problems and how easily you can access the dental treatment you need.

“We know that poor oral health is linked to other health problems, like obesity, alcohol consumption and smoking. So it makes sense to involve dentists more in plans across the NHS to address these problems. But unless more efforts are made to tackle the inequalities we identify and embed prevention of ill health across dentistry, the progress made over the past few decades in improving the nation’s oral health could stall.”