Dr. Allysha P Winburn

Inequity and suffering are perpetuated and established by human societies, which can be embodied as health disparities. Social conditions, and the systems-level factors that structure them, play an outsize role in these health disparities (Table 1)[see image in poster.] Social and structural factors can also impact oral health. The U.S. has made progress in the integration of oral health into general strategies for health improvement—integrating oral health and primary health care, improving access to and quality of services, and creating patient-centered care teams (Northridge et al., 2020). However, the proximal behavioral causes of the oral inequalities have been overemphasized, rather than the more upstream causes of social gradients in oral diseases (Watt, 2012).

Scoliosis, kyphosis, and lordosis are spinal disorders causing the spine to curve in a particular manner; scoliosis causes sideways curvature, kyphosis causes a “hunchback” curvature, and
lordosis causes an inward curvature of either the cervical or lumbar vertebrae. This study aims to determine what age ranges are most affected by a specific spinal disorder, if males or females are more likely to have a specific spinal disorder, and if specific groups are more likely to have a spinal disorder. These data could be useful for anthropologists when confronted with a decedent with a spinal disorder if the findings show evidence of certain ages, sex, or population groups being more affected.
The objective of this research was to understand the incidence of scoliosis, kyphosis, and lordosis using a sample of U.S. forensic case decedents, including frequencies of each spinal disorder associated with age, sex, and social race. This research also sought to determine which vertebrae are most affected in each spinal disorder. The aim is to inform the practice of
biological anthropology with more detailed information about where, and in whom, these pathological conditions occur.