Dental reform in Israel's National Health Insurance Law has helped children and their families, but what's next?

Abstract

Through a nationally-representative survey of 6 year-old children, Natapov, Sasson and Zusman demonstrate that the 2010 dental reform to the National Health Insurance Law (NHIL) has helped to improve the oral health of children in Israel. While the prevalence of dental caries (tooth decay) in Israel's children has remained relatively stable over time, compared to previous surveys, children now have more treated than untreated disease, suggesting that the NHIL reform has increased utilization and access to dental care, and arguably improved the quality of life of children and their families. Even though inequalities in oral health remain, universal coverage for children in Isreal is a positive development; yet for further improvements in oral health to materialize, attention will arguably need to be paid to broader preventive measures (e.g. drinking water fluoridation, oral disease prevention and oral health promotion in primary care), and more importantly, to the social determinants of health (e.g. income security, fair income distribution, food security).