Rates of tooth decay in young children might be decreasing across Alaska, but does the Interior follow the trend?

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (KTVF) – New state data show there’s something to smile about for dental health trends in Alaska, but some Fairbanks North Star Borough rates are nibbling at the optimism.

An Alaska Department of Health (ADH) epidemiology bulletin released Monday suggests that more young children across the state have been making trips to the dentist.

The data come from two rounds of the Alaska Childhood Understanding Behaviors Survey, or CUBS which some parents fill out when their kids reach 3 years old. The first survey years ran 2009 to 2011, the second from 2016 to 2019.

“Our biggest focus with this particular data source is to see where we can highlight and explore different areas of potential need,” Frances Wise said in a Tuesday interview. Wise is a study coauthor and program manager for ADH’s Oral Health Program.

The bulletin says the percentage of kids 3 and younger with no dental visit plummeted from 49% across survey years 2009-2011 to 29.6% percent in survey years 2016-2019.

That’s a significant difference, the study concluded, for a significant health indicator.

“Early age is not only solidifying good habits, but it’s also setting that foundation for overall health. We know that oral health affects a lot of other chronic conditions that can develop through life,” Wise said.

There was another statewide plus from the survey results. A smaller percentage of Alaska parents reported in the later survey years that their kids experience Early Childhood Caries (ECC).

That’s the technical term for young children getting cavities or dealing with tooth decay.

For kids 3 and younger, Alaska saw a 5% drop in ECC between the earlier and later survey years, from 30.1% of parents reporting ECC to 25.2%. Of the 10 study areas, the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta Region had the highest rate of parent-reported ECC at 67.9%.

In FNSB, parent-reported ECC rates remain comparatively low — coming in at 19.4% for the later survey years. But in spite of the lower percentage, the borough does buck the positive statewide trend. In the earlier study years, FNSB parents reported even lower rates of cavities and tooth decay in their children, just 15.3%, according to the bulletin.

Of the 10 study regions across Alaska, ECC report rates fell in six. FNSB is one of the four where the rate went up.

Wise said that could be due to any number of socioeconomic factors, but it could also be a byproduct of increased visitation rates.

“As access to care improves, our knowledge of what the disease burden is in that area is likely to improve as well, so even though in some areas we still have a ways to go in terms of access to care, seeing more care need isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” she said.

Unlike parent reports of ECC, FNSB accords with other trends from the report. Compared to the earlier survey years, a higher percentage of young children in the borough are making trips to the dentist.

In 2009-2011, 58.3% of surveyed parents in FNSB said their child hadn’t gone to the dentist by age 3. That number came down to 46.7% in the later survey years, though that’s still the highest rate of all the 10 study regions for kids in that age bracket yet to receive preventive dental care.

The borough, like the state as a whole, also saw a sharp decrease in sugary beverage consumption among young children, according to the survey results.

As one way to mitigate ECC, The ADH report recommends the reinstitution of community water fluoridation (CWF).

As an example, the report points to the City and Borough of Juneau, where supplemental fluoridation of water stopped in 2007, and ECC has been increasing dramatically — from 14.4% of parents reporting the condition in the earlier survey results to 30.3% in the later survey results.

Under then-Mayor Jerry Cleworth, the City of Fairbanks prohibited supplemental fluoridation of water in 2011, as well.

The city had assembled a task force to advise the Fairbanks City Council on the issue.

The task force’s final suggestion to remove supplemental fluoride reasoned that it puts non-nursing infants at risk, though the task force also recommended “that the Fairbanks community be informed of possible dental health implications from not fluoridating the water.”

Fairbanks City Code had required CWF since 1959. The measure repealing that requisite passed the council 5-1, preventing Golden Heart Utilities (GHU) from adding fluoride to their water. Minutes from the June 11, 2011, Fairbanks City Council meeting show that more than two dozen residents spoke unanimously in favor of the ordinance.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend communities target fluoride levels of 0.7 ppm; after the 2011 ordinance passed, GHU water’s fluoride levels fell to 0.3 ppm, the naturally occurring amount.

But Monday’s ADH bulletin refrains from outlining an ECC-CWF relationship for Fairbanks in the same way it does for Juneau, saying insufficient data exists for drawing such a conclusion.

But Wise said referring to the data as “insufficient” doesn’t count out the CWF prohibition as a culprit for the ECC increase in FNSB.

“That definitely doesn’t mean that if it were explored in the same way [as Juneau] the conclusions would be different,” Wise said. “It’s just that we didn’t have that particular data or access to those variables for this report.”

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