Status of Dental Health with the Utilization of Dental and Oral Health Services at Public Health Center

Background: Dental health problems in the community are in the high category, where the prevalence of caries in the population in Indonesia is 72.6% with a DMF-T index of 4.5, while the population with dental and oral problems who receive care and treatment is 31.1% and. So it can be interpreted that dental cases in Indonesia are high but the utilization of dental health services is still low. Purpose: To analyze the relationship of dental health status to the utilization of dental and oral health services at public health centers. Methods: This type of research is a quantitative research with a cross sectional approach. The study was conducted on patients at the Dental Polyclinic of Mangkurawang Health Center, Kutai Kartanegara Regency, East Kalimantan Province. The research sample was taken by purposive sampling technique, as many as 200 people. The independent variable is dental health status and the dependent variable is the utilization of dental health services. Data analysis was carried out using the Kendal's tau test, which aims to determine the relationship between dental health status and the utilization of dental and oral health services. Results: From the results of the study, it is known that most of the respondents have a high category of dental health status with the status of utilization of dental and oral health services in the bad category, namely 49 respondents (24.5%). Analysis with Kendal's tau test obtained p-value 0.000 (p˂0.05) meaning that there is a significant relationship between dental health status and utilization status of oral and dental health services at the public health centers. Conclusion: There is a significant relationship between dental health status and the utilization status of dental and oral health services at the public health centers