School dental health education on oral hygiene status in Brazilian Quilombolas: a prospective study

ABSTRACT

We evaluated a school dental health education on the oral hygiene status in Quilombolas of the Brazilian Amazon. This is a prospective study. We included schoolchildren aged from 5 to 12 years and carried out an oral health education program for 4 months, totaling eight workshops held in the community school that provided physical structure and material resources for their development. We evaluated oral hygiene before and after the intervention period through clinical examination with the instrument Oral Hygiene Index Simplified (OHI-S) is the combination of bacterial plaque indices. Before the intervention, all schoolchildren were instructed to use the plaque-revealing tablet after unsupervised toothbrushing and before any oral hygiene guidance given by the dentist who conducted the playful workshops on the premises of the school. Quantitative variables (OHI-S and age) with normal distribution (p > 0.05, Shapiro-Wilk test) are presented as means and standard deviations. Those with non-normal distribution (p < 0.05, Shapiro-Wilk test) are presented as medians and 25–75 percentiles. The Wilcoxon signed rank test was used for within-group comparisons. We observed a significant difference in the mean scores of the oral hygiene index simplified (p < 0.001) before and after the intervention and 56.25% of the participants improved their oral hygiene condition. The results of this study provide evidence to support the importance of personalized educational initiatives to promote oral health in marginalized groups. However, it is important to recognize the limitations of the study, such as the relatively small sample size and the lack of a control group, which may require further investigation in future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Oral hygiene
• health promotion
• health education
• vulnerable populations

Acknowledgements

We thank all the participants of the study, the Dean of Postgraduate Research and Innovation (PROPESQ) of the Federal University of the Tocantins (UFT), as well as to the Dean of Extension, Culture, and Community Subjects (Proex).

Ethics approval and consent to participate

Report number 56,954,116.20000.5516. All methods were performed in accordance with the relevant guidelines and regulations.

Availability of data and materials

The data and materials in this paper are available from the corresponding author on request.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors contributions

IABL, ESM, AMB, RJLA, FWSF, GA, AP-S, and FRPQ designed the study; IABL, ESM, AMB, and RJLA collected the data; IABL, ESM, AMB, RJLA, FWSF, GA, AP-S, and FRPQ analyzed and interpreted of the data; All authors wrote the initial draft; All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES, code 001). The funding source had no role in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, writing of the report, or in the decision to submit the article for publication.