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Absence of a moderating effect of parent health literacy on Early Head Start enrollment and dental use
Author(s) -
Burgette Jacqueline M.,
Preisser John S.,
Weinberger Morris,
King Rebecca S.,
Lee Jessica Y.,
Rozier R. Gary
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of public health dentistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.64
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1752-7325
pISSN - 0022-4006
DOI - 10.1111/jphd.12269
Subject(s) - medicine , health literacy , early head start , head start , literacy , medicaid , logistic regression , demography , odds ratio , family medicine , propensity score matching , health care , psychology , developmental psychology , pedagogy , sociology , economics , economic growth , pathology
Objectives To examine the moderating effect of parents' health literacy (HL) on the effectiveness of North Carolina Early Head Start (EHS) in improving children's dental use. Methods Parents of 479 children enrolled in EHS and 699 Medicaid‐matched parent–child dyads were interviewed at baseline when children were approximately 10 months old and 24 months later. We used in‐person computer‐assisted, structured interviews to collect information on sociodemographic characteristics, dental use, and administer the Short Assessment of Health Literacy – Spanish and English (SAHL‐S&E). This quasi‐experimental study tested whether the interaction effect between EHS and parents' HL was associated with dental use. Logit (any use) and marginalized zero‐inflated negative binomial count models (number of dental visits) included random effects to account for clustering and controlled for baseline dental use, dental need, survey language, and a propensity score covariate. Results Nineteen percent of parents in EHS had low literacy compared to 12 percent of parents in the non‐EHS group ( P < 0.01). The interaction term between EHS and parent's HL was not significant in the adjusted logit model (ratio of aORs 0.98, 95 percent CI: 0.43‐2.20) or the adjusted count model (ratio of aRRs 0.88, 95 percent CI: 0.72‐1.09). Conclusions Parents in EHS had a higher prevalence of low HL compared to non‐EHS parents. Parents' HL did not moderate the relationship between EHS and child dental use, suggesting that EHS results in similar improvements in dental use regardless of parent's HL levels.