Volume 9 • 2022 • Issue 5

socio-economic status, and even the neighborhood where a person lives affects health,” she says. “In addition to oral health, I’ve also studied systemic and chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity.” Dr. Borrelll says that her clinical training and experience as a dentist has informed her academic work. “It has helped me understand, in a grounded way, how people internalize social exposures,” she says. “How does psychosocial stress become internalized to cause problems in the body? How does something like racism affect health? In clinical practice, you see first-hand how people who are stressed have hypertension or how they drink or smoke to cope with the stress.” In a 2022 article published in the Journal of Public Health Dentistry , Dr. Borrell explores how racism has negatively affected oral health in the U.S. 1 She discusses access to care problems related to low dentist to population ratios in racial and ethnic minority communities that create “dental deserts,” lack of diversity in the dental profession, and low rates of dental insurance coverage among racial and ethnic minorities. She also describes research into how clinical decision-making is influenced by race and ethnicity. According to some of the research cited in Dr. Borrell’s article, adults between 65 and 74 with less than a high school education are almost 3 times as likely to have A dental profession that is as diverse as the population it serves would benefit oral health equity. untreated tooth decay and experience complete tooth loss compared to adults with more than a high school education. “Interestingly, these socio-economic inequities are observed across racial and ethnic groups with Black and Mexican Americans carrying a higher burden suggesting that race and ethnicity adversely affect oral health, independent of socio-economic indicators,” write Dr. Borrell and co-author Dr. David Williams. The article references other research, which showed that when dental professionals were presented with the same clinical scenario with photographs and radiographs of a decayed tooth with irreversible pulpitis, Black patients were more likely to receive a recommendation for an extraction while white patients were offered a root canal as a suggested treatment plan. A dental profession that is as diverse as the population it serves would benefit oral health equity in several ways, Dr. Borrell argues. Dentists from racial or ethnic minorities 24 | 2022 | Issue 5 Issues and People