title: The effectiveness of a dental education program on oral cleanliness for school children of 11 to 14 years old.
abstract: A dental health eduction program on oral cleanliness was given to 175 Jerusalem school-children aged 11 to 14 years. The children were divided into three groups, each numbering approximately 60: Experimental Group 1, Experimental Group 2 and Control Group. The study was conducted over an 8-week period. During the first week the Patient Hygiene Performance (PHP)--an oral hygiene index--was recorded for all the children and used as the base line for the study. It was then recorded one month after the education program was transmitted and again two months afterwards. The objectives of the study were: 1) To examine the effectiveness of a program for providing dental health information and teaching oral hygiene practice to elementary schoolchildren. 2) To find the best method of instruction in the use of toothbrushing. 3) To measure the effectiveness of toothbrushing instruction by testing toothbrushing performance over a given period. The dental health education program consisted of a lecture, 40 animated color slides and toothbrushing instruction given individually and to a group. The results indicated that the education program presented together with toothbrushing instruction improved oral cleanliness and toothbrushing skill. The group receiving individual toothbrushing instruction showed the greates improvement in home care oral cleanliness and in standard of toothbrushing performance skill. Oral cleanliness and toothbrushing skill (taught by both methods) improved with time. Girls showed a slight but constantly greater level of improvement in both oral cleanliness and tooth brushing skill.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D006267:Health Education, Dental; D006801:Humans; D007557:Israel; D009910:Oral Hygiene / Q000592:standards*; D012571:School Dentistry; D014099:Toothbrushing