Harmanjot Kaur Sidhu¹, Gurtejpal Singh Randhawa², Gurwant Kaur^3,

This study assessed rural dental health inequalities and their impact on community health by assessing access and utilization of services in unserved populations. The research combines qualitative and quantitative analysis by comparing published material to secondary quantitative datasets available online at Kaggle. The study highlights the inequalities that currently exist between rural and urban populations regarding dental services provision, preventive care, and dental health services use. This could be due to geographic inaccessibility, finances or an inadequate number of dental practitioners, making those in the rural areas less likely to seek treatment for their dental problems and have higher incidences of untreated dental diseases, missing teeth, and poorer OHRQoL. That is why the object of the study is Indigenous people living in rural areas, whose health is shown to be worse than that of non-Indigenous populations. The findings put into perspective the emergency of ways to counter the above systematic factors that hinder the use of dental services. Therefore, the reinforcement of the extension of dental health services in rural regions is a substantial factor in improving the Quality of Life of these populations. The study suggests policy improvements like enhancing the accessibility of dental personnel, widening the access to tele-dentistry, and conducting awareness campaigns on the necessity of preventive dentistry. More studies are required to evaluate the long-term efficacy of such interventions in narrowing rural dental health inequalities.

Rural dental health, Health disparities, Oral Health-Related Quality of Life, Public health interventions