EVALUATION OF DENTAL HEALTH EDUCATION IN A SCHOOL DENTAL CARE PROGRAM

Dental health education is part of the curriculum in many school systems around the The rationale is that prevention is the key to controlling dental disease, that caries and periodontal disease are largely preventable through personal behavior, and that the educational environment of the school is the logical place to teach dental health practices which will result in better dental health for today’s children and tomorrow’s adults.e.6 The benefits that materialize from these efforts, however, are difficult to substantiate. In their comprehensive review published in 1971, Rayner and CohenZs described the equivocal nature of results from studies to that time. Since that review, some studies have reported improvements in oral hygiene following an educational program,12,ef1~e1.10.:’~ but there appears to be at least as many which show little or no positive results that can be attributed to the educational program.”il.”~e~~~12.~’~ Other reported studies are difficult to assess because they did not evaluate health outcomes; “success” was determined by the reactions expressed by students, teachers, or parents. 18.’8,22.37 In a recent appraisal of the effectiveness of dental health educational programs, Frazier’O concluded that traditional activities which attempt to motivate individuals to alter their behavior were conceptually faulty, and furthermore were founded upon assumptions that cannot be supported by empirical data. Heifetz and SuomiI3 were equally unenthusiastic, stating that there was no technology known to be effective at achieving voluntary behavioral change on a community basis. Nevertheless, despite the currently prevalent view that traditional dental health educational programs are ineffective, they continue to be a major part of publicly funded school dental care programs in many countries. iw,:3’ It seems that uncertainty about the value of these dental health educational programs might be perpetuated by the inherent difficulties in their evaluation. Such evaluation as has been undertaken, as in the studies cited previously, has been mostly short-term, and usually directed at dental health educational programs that were not part of the dental treatment programs. However, some exceptions have been reported. Results from the World Health Organization, Division of Dentistry,