Driving and public transit barriers to dental care in the United States

Despite the increasing number of dentists in the United States, the uneven distribution of dental clinics and inequities in public transportation contribute to ongoing disparities in access to dental care. This study examined travel times by car and public transit to the nearest dental clinic across the United States. We used data on 104,695 clinics from the IQIVIA practitioners' database. Drive and transit times to the nearest dental clinic were calculated at the block group level. Longer travel-time hotspots were defined as areas where the Getis-Ord Gi∗ z-score was ≥1.96, corresponding to statistical significance at the 95% confidence level. Approximately 49.3 million (19.1%) of US adults lack public transit access to dental care. Mean public transit times were 13.0, 18.5, and 34.3 min in urban, suburban, and rural areas, respectively, while mean driving times were 2.8, 3.4, and 10.5 min. Block groups experiencing extreme social deprivation were 1.7 times more likely (95% CI: 1.5-2.0) to be in drive-time hotspots, and 3.7 times more likely (95% CI: 3.2-4.3) compared with those with the least deprivation. Suburban and rural block groups were 1.4 times (95% CI: 1.3-1.6) and 2.4 times (95% CI: 2.2-2.7), respectively, more likely to be in public-transit-time hotspots than urban block groups. These findings demonstrate significant transportation barriers to accessing dental care across different regions and demographic groups, highlighting disparities in geographic accessibility.