An Oral Health Education Program for Latino Immigrant Parents

Abstract

A high prevalence of dental caries in the pediatric population is a major health problem. At highest risk are low-income minority groups, including refugee and immigrant populations. Consequences of oral disease include pain, difficulty eating and speaking, poor school performance, and poor self-esteem. Parent involvement in oral health education is crucial. This program provided oral health education for Latino immigrant parents in a northern California school district. A pretest-posttest was administered to measure changes in oral health knowledge and reported oral health behaviors following two sessions of oral health education. This program provides a framework for school nurses who are in an ideal position to implement similar programs that address the oral health needs of the pediatric population, particularly those of the Latino immigrant community.

Impact of an Oral Health Education Workshop on Parents’ Oral Health Knowledge, Attitude, and Perceived Behavioral Control among African Immigrants

“…It has been shown that providing information through brochures, pamphlets, text messages, and lectures only has a modest impact on improving oral health-related knowledge and behaviors [9,10]. Mothers who participated in oral health workshops demonstrated significantly more increased knowledge and improved behavior than those in the control group who only received oral health information through pamphlets [10].…”

“…Children of low-income minority groups including ethnic minorities are at highest risk to ECC [19]. A number of studies have indicated that enhancing access to oral help services, while important, is not adequate to improve oral health of minority populations [9]. Therefore, efforts are required to promote and implement communitybased educational programs that are culturally sensitive and deliverable by the local community workers.…”

“…Therefore, a combined provision of information through written materials or lectures and hands-on demonstrations is more successful in enhancing participants' uptake and, thus, is recommended for oral health promotion programs [10,20,21]. Using interactive audio/visual methods in community-oriented workshops would minimize the language and health literacy barriers in education of newcomers and has been shown to be more effective than other conventional approaches for this population [9,22]. In this study, we invited parents to participate in the workshops because young children are greatly influenced by their parents' behaviors [10].…”

“…There are many ways to bring awareness and communicate knowledge to the public such as information pamphlets, individual letters, television campaigns, public workshops, and presentations [9,10]. Each method has some advantages and disadvantages.…”

“…Each method has some advantages and disadvantages. With respect to recent immigrants, 2 Journal of Oral Diseases language and health literacy are two recognized barriers that would limit the impact of many existing dental education programs [9]. A community-oriented approach in the form of an interactive audio/visual workshop has been proven to be more successful than other traditional resources [11,12].…”