Southerners visit the dentist the least

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 (UPI) -- States that have the most residents with health insurance also have the most who say they visited a dentist in the last year, a U.S. survey says.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, conducted from January through June involving 177,000 people, indicates 75.3 percent in Massachusetts say they visited a dentist in the last 12 months, followed by Connecticut, Hawaii, Minnesota and Rhode Island.

However, only 52 percent of those who live in Mississippi say they visited the dentist in the last 12 months, followed by Louisiana, West Virginia, Texas and Alabama.

Regionally, people living in the Northeast and upper Midwest are the most likely to say they visited the dentist in the past year, while those in southern states have the lowest percentages of people who say they visited the dentist. The nine states with the lowest incidence of dentist visits are in the South, Gallup officials say.

Nationwide, an average of 65 percent of all American adults say they visited a dentist in the last 12 months during this time period -- essentially unchanged from past years, Gallup say.

The overall telephone survey has a margin of error of 0.2 percentage points, while the margin of error for most states is 1 percentage point to 2 percentage points and the smaller states such as Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska and Hawaii have a margin of error of 4 percentage points.