Structured Abstract Background: Research and policy emphasize that attending school every day is critical, yet the reasons why students miss school remain less understood. With growing concern over absenteeism, it's essential to develop a more nuanced understanding, especially regarding absences related to preventive health care. To exemplify this issue, this study focuses on whether students miss school for reasons such as routine dental care. Research Question: To what extent are children missing more days of school or experiencing a higher likelihood of chronic absenteeism due to preventive dental care (i.e., 6-month dental visits)? We also explore whether dental visits serve as a proxy for socioeconomic advantages, such as income or insurance coverage, and whether those factors explain attendance patterns. Research Design: Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010–11, we examined the association between going to the dentist and children’s absences in the earliest years of schooling. Using a sample of 23,470 student-by-year observations, we used several regressions with a student-level fixed effect approach to examine the relationship between preventive dental visits and missing school. We also tested what student characteristics predicted both dental visits and attendance outcomes. Conclusions: We found that regular dental visits are more common among students with higher income and insurance coverage, yet these socioeconomic indicators do not predict absenteeism when dental visits are used as the predictor. Preventive dental care is associated with only minimal school absences and not with chronic absenteeism. These findings suggest the need for more targeted attendance messaging and raise the potential value of school-based health services, especially for families less likely to access preventive care.
Gottfried et al. (Thu,) studied this question.