Impact of oral health education on oral hygiene knowledge, practices, plaque control and gingival health of 13‐ to 15‐year‐old school children in Bangalore city

Abstract

Objectives To assess effectiveness of an oral health education (OHE) programme on oral hygiene knowledge, practices, plaque control and gingival health of 13‐ to 15‐year‐old school children in Bangalore city. Methods Three schools were randomly selected and assigned to experimental I, experimental II and control groups. At baseline, a 20‐item questionnaire was used to assess the oral hygiene knowledge and practices. Clinical examinations (Turesky–Gilmore–Glickman modification of Quigley Hein plaque index; Loe–Silness gingival index) were performed by 2 examiners. OHE was provided by the investigator for experimental groups I (lecture using a PowerPoint presentation) and II (lecture using a PowerPoint presentation with toothbrushing demonstration). Control group did not receive any intervention. Reinforcement was provided for experimental groups at 3 and 6 months. At end of 9 months, questionnaire was administered and clinical examinations were performed. Data were analysed using chi‐square, anova and post hoc Tukey's tests. Results Nine months post‐intervention, there was significant improvement in oral hygiene knowledge and practices in experimental groups. There were significant reductions in mean plaque index and gingival index scores in the experimental groups. The control group did not show any significant improvement. Conclusion Active involvement of school children with reinforcement of OHE can improve oral hygiene knowledge, practices and gingival health and decrease plaque levels.

Impact of Educational Interventions Based on the Implementation Intentions Strategy on the Oral Health of Schoolchildren

“…This finding is not in agreement with results of observational studies presented in reference, which observed that the effective involvement of parents or other members of the family in educational intervention, may positively impact schoolchildren regarding oral health [15,27]. A hypothesis for this result may be due to the fact that parents did not support the proposal of researchers due to socioeconomic and cultural contexts that determine the oral health lifestyle and values for each family [27,28].…”

“…Other hypothesis for the lack of statistically significant difference in GBI and a not very evident difference in PI, as well as 2 in correct and wrong answers of groups IG1, IG2 and CG, may have been the impact of the educational methodology initially used in the three groups, which has been based on exercise of participation of children and use of educational resources that stimulate empathy of children to the subjects proposed, with the use of characters considered relevant to them and, therefore, different from interventions proposed in literature, which are primarily focused on cognitive contents of oral health, using illustrations and models meaningless to children and use of passive learning methodologies [2,13,15].…”

“…In addition, children from all groups answered a questionnaire about basic oral health knowledge with 9 multiple choice questions developed from previous studies [13,15], including topics such as oral self-care, tooth brushing frequency, use and importance of dental floss and eating habits, assigning score 1 for right answers and 0 for wrong answers. To investigate the comprehension of instrument questions by children, a pilot test was carried out with a sample of 15 schoolchildren of the same schools.…”

Impact of School Based Oral Health Education Programmes in India: A Systematic Review

“…Four of the studies used randomized controlled designs and provided adequate data for inclusion in the formal meta-analysis [10,12,15,18]. Three of the studies used plaque as one of their outcomes and only one used DMFT and DMFS index for assessing the oral hygiene status after conducting dental health education.…”

“…Ten articles were found to be relevant to the impact of school dental health education, and hence were included in the present review [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18]. Data from all the 10 articles was critically analyzed to determine the impact and effectiveness of school dental health education programmes conducted in different parts of the country [Table/ Fig-2].…”