Race in public health dentistry: a critical review of the literature.

Objective: To carry out a critical review of the literature on the use of race, color, and ethnicity in the field of public health dentistry.

Methods: A literature search was conducted in MEDLINE via PubMed for articles published between 2014 and 2019. Using a data extraction form, we collected information on (1) bibliographic characteristics of the selected papers; (2) race, color, and ethnicity of the study participants and their sociodemographic profiles; and (3) the extent to which the original publications followed the recommendations by Kaplan and Bennett (2003) on the use of race, color, or ethnicity in biomedical research.