American Twitter Users Revealed Social Determinants-related Oral Health Disparities amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

TL;DR

This study analyzes Twitter discussions during COVID-19 to reveal social disparities in oral health, showing how demographic and regional factors influence online health conversations and highlighting vulnerable groups.

Contribution

It introduces a novel social media-based approach to assess oral health disparities during the pandemic using user demographics and geographic data.

Findings

Women and young adults discuss oral health more frequently.

Higher insurance coverage correlates with specific oral health topics.

People in high COVID-19 risk areas talk more about decay and chipped teeth.

Abstract

Objectives: To assess self-reported population oral health conditions amid COVID-19 pandemic using user reports on Twitter. Method and Material: We collected oral health-related tweets during the COVID-19 pandemic from 9,104 Twitter users across 26 states (with sufficient samples) in the United States between November 12, 2020 and June 14, 2021. We inferred user demographics by leveraging the visual information from the user profile images. Other characteristics including income, population density, poverty rate, health insurance coverage rate, community water fluoridation rate, and relative change in the number of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases were acquired or inferred based on retrieved information from user profiles. We performed logistic regression to examine whether discussions vary across user characteristics. Results: Overall, 26.70% of the Twitter users discuss wisdom tooth pain/jaw hurt, 23.86% tweet about dental service/cavity, 18.97% discuss chipped tooth/tooth break, 16.23% talk about dental pain, and the rest are about tooth decay/gum bleeding. Women and younger adults (19-29) are more likely to talk about oral health problems. Health insurance coverage rate is the most significant predictor in logistic regression for topic prediction. Conclusion: Tweets inform social disparities in oral health during the pandemic. For instance, people from counties at a higher risk of COVID-19 talk more about tooth decay/gum bleeding and chipped tooth/tooth break. Older adults, who are vulnerable to COVID-19, are more likely to discuss dental pain. Topics of interest vary across user characteristics. Through the lens of social media, our findings may provide insights for oral health practitioners and policy makers.