RFK Accepted As HHR Secretary, "Dental Deserts" In US And The Fluoride's Fate: Recent News

Recently, Robert F Kennedy, notorious for his anti-vax and anti-fluoride rhetoric, was confirmed as a Health and Human Resources secretary. This position allows him to implement his controversial ideas in the country.

In our previous article, we explained RFK's misconceptions and the possible consequences of canceling the water fluoridation initiative. Today, we want to complete this topic with some fresh statistics from the US that demonstrate notable problems with the current availability of dental services in the country.

Recent research led by Harvard University demonstrated that some regions are presented as "dental deserts," and people need to travel for hours to get a dental checkup or receive treatment.

Key Findings

The key factor determining dental service availability is the area's socioeconomic status. Unsurprisingly, urbanized regions have more than 2,5 times more dentists per capita than less developed regions:

Rural areas have one dentist for 3850 people.
Urban areas – 1 dentist for 1470 people.

According to the research, one-fifth of the US population has no adequate access to dental clinics. Among them, 1,7 (0.5%) million live in so-called "dental deserts" – they do not have access to dental services within a 30-minute drive. It's interesting that only Washington, DC, and four states – Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, and New Jersey – have no dental deserts on their territory.

The most "dental devastated' states, in turn, are:

Alaska – 10.4% of the population has no access to dental care
Montana – 7.8% of citizens
North Dakota – 7.7% of citizens

Why it's important?

This research identifies the regions that are the most problematic for maintaining dental health. If RFK decided to launch its campaign against water fluoridation, the abovementioned areas would bear most of its consequences because this chemical is a crucial mineral that reduces the risk of oral cavity and oral inflammation diseases, inhibiting pathogens' development.

Fluoride is especially important for rural areas with low population density and poor regions as the most available source that allows care for dental health.

Though it's still unclear how RFK plans to "fight" water fluoridation, there is no doubt that this campaign will force a chain of changes in dental service approaches to eliminate the gap in national oral health that will occur in the future, as it already happened in the case of fluoride cancellation in the Canadian city Calgary.

Changes in the national dental care approach in the US, in turn, will affect dental practices across the world, as US treatment standards are considered international standards.

We will keep you informed regarding this topic, and for now, we highly recommend reading our previous articles about the fluoride issue on our Newsfeed:

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