Introduction: Facilitating access to oral services can improve the oral status of individuals, especially children and adolescents. This study aimed at evaluating the access and barriers to the oral and dental health of children and adolescents in Kerman, Iran from their parents’ point of view. Materials and methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was performed on 245 parents of children selected by a systematic two-stage method. Data was collected using a validated questionnaire that contained demographic characteristics, a question about self-assessment of parents and children’s oral health status, four questions about accessibility indicators, five questions about the ways to improve access to dental services, and 16 questions about service access barriers. Data analysis was carried out in SPSS version 18, applying the regression test at a significance level of 0.05. Results and discussion: In this study, 28.6% of the subjects were men and the rest were women. Children’s oral health status was reported as moderate in 37.6% of the participants. The most important barrier to access (62.45%) was the high dental costs, while education about care for children’s teeth was the most frequent way (35.1%) to improve the dental services. According to the results, there was a significant relationship between the economic status and the time of arriving at the dentist, with barriers to accessing dental care. Moreover, a significant relationship was observed between parents’ level of education and their oral health status with ways to improve access to dental services.Conclusions: According to the results of the present study, the most important barrier to dental care was the high costs. Furthermore, providing education on child dental care was the most important factor in improving children’s access to dental services.
Keywords:- access
- adolescents.
- barriers
- children
- oral health