Non-utilization of oral health services and associated factors among children and adolescents: an integrative review

Objective: To review publications exploring non-utilization of oral health services and to identify factors associated with non-utilization of oral health services among children and adolescents. Materials and methods: An integrative review design was adopted. A search was conducted for research articles published during the period from 2000 to April 2021 in five databases, Medline via Ovid, Scopus, CINAHL, Cochrane Library and Web of Science. Inclusion criteria were original articles examining non-utilization of oral health services among 0–19 years old and studies published in peer-reviewed journals in English. Thematic analysis was undertaken to identify common themes. The Newcastle-Ottawa scale was used to evaluate the quality of the studies. Results: Twenty-one geographically diverse articles were included. Nineteen studies were cross-sectional, one was a prospective cohort and one a case-control study. Non-utilization of dental health services tended to be higher in children than adolescents. There were predisposing (age, gender, ethnicity, parent’s level of education), enabling (family income, dental insurance) and need factors (subjective and objective oral health related parameters) that had been shown to be associated with non-utilization of dental services among children and adolescents. Conclusions: This integrative review found predisposing, enabling and need factors to be associated with dental health service non-utilization.