Perceived racism associated with declines in self-rated oral health among U.S. Black women

Abstract

Purpose: Racial disparities in oral health are well-documented. Stress has been associated with both perceived racism and oral health, yet little research has directly investigated the association between perceived racism and oral health.

Methods: We used data from the Black Women's Health Study, a longitudinal cohort study that includes a geographically diverse sample of Black women across the United States. Perceived exposure to racism was assessed via two scales, one assessing lifetime exposure and one everyday exposure. Self-rated oral health was subsequently assessed over multiple time points. We used Cox proportional hazard models to calculate adjusted incidence rate ratios estimating the association between higher levels of perceived racism and incident "fair" or "poor" oral health, and explored potential effect measure modification using stratified models.

Results: The adjusted incidence rate ratios (n = 27,008) relating perceived racism to incident fair or poor oral health were 1.50 (95% confidence interval 1.35, 1.66) comparing the highest quartile of everyday racism to the lowest and 1.45 (95% confidence interval 1.31, 1.61) for the highest score of lifetime racism compared to the lowest. We did not see evidence of effect modification.

Conclusions: Higher levels of perceived racism documented in 2009 were associated with declines in self-rated oral health from 2011 to 2019.

Keywords: Oral health; Race; Racial disparities; Racism; Self-rated oral health; Social epidemiology.