Acculturation and dental health among Vietnamese living in Melbourne, Australia

Objectives: To describe the relationship between acculturation and oral hea lth status, oral health knowledge and frequency of dental visits in subject s of Vietnamese background, 18 years or older, living in Melbourne, Austral ia. Methods: Oral health status was measured using the DMFS index. Oral hea lth knowledge was estimated by responses to six specific oral preventive me asures: brushing, flossing, use of fluorides, diet, and dental visits. Dent al visits was measured by the number of visits in the 12 months prior to th e survey. Acculturation was measured along two dimensions, psychological an d behavioural, using the Psychological-Behavioural Acculturation Scale. Dat a were analysed using multivariate analysis to identify the combined effect of eight predictors (age, gender, occupational status, education, reason f or migration, proportion of life in the host country,behavioural acculturat ion and psychological acculturation) against the dependent variables. Resul ts: The analysis was conducted on a sample of 147 subjects and showed signi ficant interactions between the acculturation variables and three outcome m easures: dental caries, knowledge of preventive measures and dental visits. Results indicated that acculturation was an important intervening variable . Psychological acculturation was strongly related to the three oral health outcomes, although the effect of behavioural acculturation was also appare nt regarding dental status. Conclusions: This study offers several insights for understanding the mechanisms by which acculturation impacts oral healt h status. Interventions that simplify the cultural influence of immigrant g roups by focusing on socio-demographic differences and even immigration var iables to define risk groups might not produce predicted changes in oral he alth status.