The Lion's Pride Volume 9 (January 2018) | Page 57

harm a person’s overall health by impairing their diet or reducing their
resistance to diseases and bacterial infections. These connections are
often overlooked when people consider the impact of dental and oral
health on being generally healthy. Because oral health plays a significant
part in overall health, the implications of poor dental health means that it
has a significant future impact on individuals and also on society.
Examples of the negative outcomes of poor dental health can include
losing a job or personal relationships, having to pay for expensive dental
procedures, and increasing the burden on health care system. Promoting
good oral health helps individuals by providing an advantage to their
general health; it also benefits society by decreasing the pressure on
health care infrastructure and reducing the economic impact of lost
productivity. Individuals with poor oral health can be harmful to society
in different ways. One way is that these people will require more
resources from medical and dental providers. These people will also be
less productive economically. Even for people with stable employment,
having poor dental health could mean they miss work more often and are
also less productive economically.
Recent gains made in dental health in the US have been the result of a
conscious and coordinated effort to improve the situation since the early
2000s. The HHS report on “Oral Health in America” in 2000 showed,
among other things, that the public considers “oral signs and symptoms
to be less important” indications of overall health. The report