Development of Oral Health Program on Knowledge and Oral Health Literacy among Students and Families

Abstract

Aim: To develop a program on oral health literacy (OHL) and enhance oral health knowledge. Materials and Methods: The action research was designed to develop a learning program by 14 teachers and three dentists to implement for 180 high school students in grades 7 and 10, and 120 of their guardians. Random assignment was used to allocate three schools from regions. The data were collected by 54 items related to OHL with Cronbach α = 0.98 and the OH knowledge test of 36 items with reliability 0.65–0.78. The data were analyzed by t test and multivariate analysis of variance. Results: 1) The teachers understood the role of being health education teachers which was related to the subject called OHL, 2) the teachers were granted an OH learning management program to be applied to health education subject for a semester, and 3) after the implement of the program integrated health education subject, it is found that the students had the OHL level as quite high, but lower than their guardians with mean 162.18 (SD = 22.97), and mean 167.42 (SD = 26.72), respectively. The results show that the guardians had significantly more OHL than students (t = 5.106, P = 0.025), and there was OH knowledge no different between students and their guardians. Students and guardians with few OH problems had higher OHL too (P < 0.05). Conclusion: All participants had better OHL and knowledge. OHL management program will promote smart healthy students and families.