Are parents’ education levels associated with either their oral health knowledge or their children’s oral health behaviors? A survey of 8446 families in Wuhan

Abstract

Background: Children aged 6-7 years are in the early mixed dentition, which is a period of high prevalence of dental caries and other dental diseases and a critical period for the formation of oral health behaviors. Therefore, good oral hygiene habits of children and oral health knowledge of parents are very important. This study sought to explore the relationship between children's oral health behaviors, parental oral health knowledge, parental choices of pit and fissure sealants, and parents' education levels based on a large-scale sample size for the first time, and to compare the influences of parental education levels between parents. Methods: Families of the first and second graders of primary schools in Wuhan Hongshan District were included in this study. A total of 8446 questionnaires were collected to obtain comprehensive information on children's oral health behaviors, parents' oral health knowledge and parents' pit and fissure sealants-related choices. The relationship between these outcome variables and parents' education levels were studied using logistic regression analysis and chi-square test. Results: Parents who reported good educational background had more favorable oral health knowledge than those of other parents, and their children had better oral hygiene behaviors. Four indicators of five measures to children's oral health behaviors were significantly associated with mother's education level (P < 0.05), and three of them were related to father's education level (P ≤ 0.01). Moreover, seven indicators of eight measures to parents' oral health knowledge were significantly related to mother's education level (P < 0.05) and four of them were affected by the father's (P < 0.05). In addition, parents with higher educational attainments paid more attention to the completeness of medical facilities, the environment of dental practice, the distance to treatment sites, and took less concern of children's willingness when choosing the pit and fissure sealants sites.

Socio-Economic Status May Associate Different Risk(s) with Early Childhood Caries (ECC) That Can Cause the Development of Psychomotor Deficiency in Preschool Children Aged 3–6 Years Old: The Results of Preliminary Analysis from a Cohort Study

“…Interestingly, the results of present analyses confirm, for the first time, that there is indeed a causal relationship between ECC and psychomotor deficiency in growing children aged 3-6 years old, based on the recruited preschoolers that were measured twice and analyzed over time in the study. It is worth noting that maternal education and occupation, but not paternal metrics, were significantly associated with the gross motor and personal-social CCDI aspects (Table 2), a finding consistent with most of the reported results, emphasizing the critical maternal influence under the content-gradients of SES on ECC for oral health conditions evaluated [17,18,23,24].…”

“…Moreover, it remains to be seen further whether such analytic outcomes and interpretations will be in concordance with the above prior analyses on the confounders' issue, which is a key limitation of the present analyses from our cohort study. Additional limitations of the present study may also include: the parent-child relationship and parenting qualities that may interfere the oral health and psychomotor determinants with the development of verbal vs. language skills; additionally, any unfeasible or uncontrollable factors that may complicate the conditions of SES indirectly, such as environmental stress or personal psychosocial coherence [20,21,[23][24][25].…”

“…Modern research on caries has indicated that the non-dental risks of ECC may include a low level of SES, other vulnerable sub-populations with disparities, and/or certain minority ethnical vs. racial groups, etc. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify the critical risks of ECC and also target the high-risk sub-populations on prevention and effective protocols for subsequent proper treatments vs. managements.…”

“…in regular/normal classes of kindergarteners (i.e., no developmentally delayed children involved) analyzed via a crosssectional bi-township design [10][11][12]. Furthermore, other studies in the field have shown that the socio-economic status (SES) has long been considered one of the risk factors or even a predictor for ECC development and/or progress in children, including the levels of family/household incomes, parental education and occupation, access to medical/dental healthcare facilities, etc., all of which may be attributed to the equity issue of caries distribution in the population studied [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Likewise, SES may also be a domain for the oral health behavior and conceptual access to dental healthcare of the parents and/or caregivers in preschoolers [14][15][16][17].…”

Effectiveness of Online Oral Health Education During the Covid-19 Pandemic

“…This is consistent with the 2015 Gomes study and the 2020 Chen study, namely individuals with low educational degrees will have low health literacy, poor diet, and poor oral health behaviors. 20,21 According to Passalacqua (2012), the level of education affects the level of knowledge about dental and oral health because the higher the level of individual education, the higher the possibility of the individual being exposed to dental and oral health promotion programs. 22 Of all the pre and post test questions, question number 11 about masks is the result with the smallest percentage of errors.…”