Discussions on oral health care among elderly Chinese immigrants in Melbourne and Vancouver

This study explored how elderly Chinese immigrants value and relate to how acculturation influences oral health and subsequent service use.

Elders who had immigrated to Melbourne and Vancouver within the previous 15 years were recruited from local community centres and assigned to focus groups of 5-7 participants in Vancouver (4 groups) or Melbourne (5 groups).

Following an iterative process of thematic analysis, the discussions revealed that immigrants care about the comfort and appearance of their teeth, and they value Western dentistry as a supplement to traditional remedies, but they have difficulty getting culturally sensitive information about oral health care. Accessing dentistry, they explained, is distressing because of language problems and financial costs that impose on their children. Consequently, many immigrants obtain dental treatment in China when they return for occasional visits. They felt that separation of dentistry from national health care programmes in Canada and Australia disregards natural links between oral health and general health.

The similarity of concerns in both cities suggests that dissemination of information and availability of services are the important themes influencing oral health, and that, beliefs developed over a lifetime play an important role in interpreting oral health in the host country.