# Longitudinal Analysis of Dental Caries Indices in Inner-City African-American Children

> **NIH NIH R03** · MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $149,204

## Abstract

Project Summary
This project addresses the urgent need of a comprehensive model to further our understanding of the complex
and dynamic role of various risk factors in early childhood caries (ECC) development across the child's age
continuum. Although the risk factors (biological, behavioral, socio-economic, psychological and environmental)
of ECC are relatively well known, their effects and their discriminating power along the disease pathological
process remain poorly understood. A popular approach for evaluating these effects has been to use models that
impose homogeneity along the life course of the disease, or to rely on cross-sectional data. This approach is
useful but has limitations. Some risk factors may be more important in very early life (eg., low birth weight and
other biological conditions), but less relevant in older ages as other risk factors come into play and the children
become more vulnerable to caries. A unique study that provides detailed longitudinal information to untangle
the cascade of relevant risk factors along the life course of ECC is the Detroit Dental Health Project. This is a
longitudinal study designed to understand the oral health of low-income African-American children (0-5 years)
and their main caregivers (14+ years) residing in the city of Detroit, Michigan. Among other information, this
study comprises longitudinal investigations involving various risk factors and mouth-level caries indices which
can help to delineate the natural trajectories of ECC in an unfortunate setting of limited clinical intervention.
Analyzing ECC data from the Detroit study is inherently complex because of the large number of ECC risk factors
that are potentially correlated; complex relationships between these risk factors and caries along the child's age
continuum; the longitudinal (within-child) association of caries indices; and a sizeable frequency of zero-valued
caries indices. To our best knowledge, we are not aware of any statistical method that addresses these nontrivial
complications that are very specific to ECC indices and the Detroit data. We propose to fill this gap in the
literature by formulating a less restrictive semiparametric model coupled with a variable selection method to
understand the life course of ECC among inner-city African-American children. Formulating and implementing
such a model is not trivial owing to the complexity of the theoretical arguments and the computational burden.
Following the completion of this project, we will acquire evidenced-based knowledge that would be helpful in
tailoring a dental caries prevention policy for low-income children during the first five years of life.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9856434
- **Project number:** 5R03DE027108-02
- **Recipient organization:** MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** DAVID TODEM
- **Activity code:** R03 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $149,204
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-02-01 → 2023-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9856434

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9856434, Longitudinal Analysis of Dental Caries Indices in Inner-City African-American Children (5R03DE027108-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9856434. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*