Evaluation of oral health awareness, practices and effectiveness of oral health educational programamong elementary schools children in hail city, kingdom of saudi arabia

Background: Disciplinary efforts by health workers along with parents and teachers through organized educational program can help school children to expand knowledge and to establish positive attitudes and behaviors toward
dental health. Aim & objectives: The primary objective of the study is to evaluate how much information were left after 6 months and one year after oral health educational program. Second objective is to improve children awareness,
practices and attitude toward dental health and to recognize the etiology behind the increased progression of dental diseases in Saudi children even after the beginning of oral educational programs and establish a baseline data for further explorations.
Materials & Methods: It was an observational study with a comparative design having a systematic random sampling technique. Sample size was 529 participants with age ranging between 8-11 years old. Schools were selected based on geographic criteria. Study tools were 3 sets of self-admitted questionnaires having the same items concerning oral health knowledge and practices. First set of the questionnaires represented the base line data.
The second set of questionnaires were given after 6 months period and the third set was giving after 1 year. The data was displayed and analyzed on Statistical Package of Social Sciences, SPSS version 20. Data was displayed
as number and percentage.
Results: At base line, 34% of children brush twice daily and increased up to 54.8% after six months. Understanding the role of dental plaque increased by 41.6% after 6 months. Gingival disease awareness improved by 21.3% at 1year follow up. Conclusion: oral health programs proved that can be beneficial to improve children awareness and attitudes toward oral health. Because of the limited evidence based in the kingdom of such regard, it is advisable to do more studies in this topic. Due to the deficient knowledge of school children in the base line data, we recommend to provide more efforts to correct this issue