Rural/Remote Communities – Distribution of dental Professionals
The distribution of dental workforce between rural and urban settings is highly skewed giving rise to social disparities and barriers to access oral health care. The Canadian dentist to population ratio in 2009 was 57.6 dentists per 100,000 individuals while in the same year, the ratio of dentists/population in rural regions was 3.5 times lower than in urban areas (CDA, 2010).
In Québec, dentists in rural areas and small towns are scattered over a large territory:
- Approximately 90.3% of dentists are located in urban areas (Emami Elham et al., 2010).
- Oral health professionals are principally located in large urban centers like Montreal, Quebec City and Sherbrooke (Emami Elham et al., 2010).
- Only 1% of all specialists in Quebec practice in rural areas (Emami Elham et al., 2010).
- Some areas like the Lower North Shore, Northern Quebec, north of Mont-Laurier and Maniwaki and finally east of Témiscamingue are not well served by dental professionals at all (Emami Elham et al., 2010).
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