Oral health is not always top of mind when people think about aging. But for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, it can have lasting effects on health and quality of life.

Philip McCallion, director of the School of Social Work at Temple University’s Barnett College of Public Health, is part of an international research effort examining how oral health shapes aging outcomes for this population. The work takes place through the Intellectual Disability Supplement to the Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (IDS-TILDA), a long-running study that follows adults with intellectual disabilities as they grow older.

“One consequence of people with intellectual disabilities receiving less dental care than the general population is that, at older ages, many have no teeth,” McCallion said.

According to McCallion, some individuals may not receive the same level of routine dental treatment or daily oral care as others. Over time, that can lead to missing teeth, untreated decay, and other complications.

“It’s not just that people lose teeth,” McCallion said. “They’re also less likely to get dentures or implants. So then what does that mean?”

For example, losing teeth can make it difficult to eat foods that are often recommended as part of a healthy diet.

“How do you eat a raw carrot?” McCallion said. “As simple as that.”

The research team has also examined how oral health may be connected to other health conditions. In one recent study, researchers looked at links between oral health and pneumonia among adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

The oral health work is led by Dr. Caoimhin MacGiolla Phadraig of Dublin Dental Hospital, who collaborates with McCallion and other researchers on the project. McCallion said the broader goal of the research is to better understand what contributes to healthy aging.

“As we try to understand what affects health and daily life, we have to think not just about how many years people live, but how many healthy years they live.”