Farmworker Oral Health Fact Sheet

According to an analysis of migrant health center encounter data, dental disease ranks as one of the top five health problems for farmworkers ages 5 through 29, and remains among the top twenty health problems for farmworkers of all other ages presenting for care. For children ages 10 to 19, dental disease are the chief complaint.1 Over the last eighteen years, numerous local level studies of the oral health of farmworker children and adults have been conducted. The findings consistently show farmworkers of all ages to have a level of oral health far worse than what is found in the general population.