Recommendations to Improve The Utilization of Dental and Oral Care: A Systematic Review

Background: Analysis the goals of the utilization of dental services at the dental health service is elementary school students who need dental care can keep their teeth as long as possible in their mouth (preventive). The reasons for not fulfilling the utilization of dental services include parents not feeling comfortable when their children visit the Community Health Center, not knowing the importance of dental care for problematic teeth/students' parents not paying attention to the presence of tooth decay and feeling that their children's teeth are still healthy. Objective: This research aims to compile several recommendations for health services and community health centers that influence the utilization of dental and oral health care in children through systematic review analysis.

Materials and Methods: The analysis method used in descriptive systematic review. The strategy used to search for articles using PICO and literature search was conducted in February 2025. The systematic review uses the PRISMA checklist to determine whether the studies have been reaching out and are similar to the purpose of a systematic review. The total number of studies was fifteen articles.

Result: Factors that can influence the utilization of dental and oral health services in elementary school students are consumer factors, enabling factors, perceived needs, and evaluated needs. Enabling factors are support achieving goals include income, having health insurance, social support and distance. Perceived need, the condition of the disease felt by the individual so that they have a stimulus in using health services. Evaluated need is visiting the dentist after receiving the examination that had been carried out, then given a referral.

Conclusion: The health service and community health centers need to be an active role in providing assistance and supervision to the utilization/use of dental services by providing counseling to the community, collaborating with the private sector through CSR in providing contributions to the community through mobile dental clinic services, Formation of school dental health cadres by providing training and assistance to elementary school students.