Oral hygiene practices, its associated factors and evaluation of oral health education package among 6-8 grade students of bajrabarahi municipality, Lalitpur

Abstract

Oral health is recognized as equally important in relation to general health. Proper oral hygiene is the fundamental basis of the common risk factor approach to prevent the oral diseases. Dental caries is the common oral pathology that remain widely prevalent among all populations throughout the lifespan. The school years cover a period that runs from childhood to adolescence. These are influential and receptive stages in people’s lives when lifelong sustainable oral health related behaviors, as well as beliefs and attitudes, are being developed. Children may also be equipped with personal skills that enable them to make healthy decisions. So school may be considered as an ideal setting for conducing successful health programs. This study provides important information to identify the oral hygiene practices and aims to implement the oral health education package among school students. The objective of the study is to identify the status of oral hygiene practices, its associated factors, and evaluate the effectiveness of oral health education package in improving the practices on oral hygiene among the students of 6-8 grade of Bajrabarahi Municipility of Lalitpur District. The school based action research was conducted among the students of grade 6-8 of Bajrabarahi Municipality. The study was completed in three phases. The phase I was Baseline study Phase, this phase was conducted to identify the status and gaps on oral hygiene practices. Phase II was the package development phase, from the findings of the baseline study the intervention package on oral hygiene was developed. Phase III was implementation phase, in this phase the implementation and evaluation of health education package on oral hygiene practices was done. Baseline study was conducted in total 5 secondary private school of Bajrabarahi Municipality which was selected randomly and all the students of class 6-8 were selected as a study population. Quantitative technique was used for the data collection the self-administered questionnaire was employed to collect the information from the students. Cross sectional study design was applied for the baseline study. Data entry and analysis was done on SPSS 21 version Study reveals that 100% of the respondents brush their teeth daily. Only 37.6% of the student brush their teeth twice a day. Majority of the student use toothpaste and toothbrush to clean their teeth. 54% of the respondent change their toothbrush more than 6 month. Among the participants 23.9% followed the appropriate technique of brushing. 55% of the participant used to rinse their mouth after major meal and 45% rinse their mouth only after major meal. Only 20.2% of the participant used to visit dentist every 6 month. Regarding the status of oral hygiene practice more than fifty percent of the participant have below average practice on oral hygiene (55.8%). Regarding knowledge only 36.1% participants have knowledge on proper techniques of brushing. 85.2% have above or equal average knowledge on oral hygiene. The education level of the mother and perceived barrier was found significantly associated with oral hygiene practice. The second phase of the study was package development phase. In this phase package on oral hygiene was developed according to the information obtained from the baseline study. From the baseline findings the package was developed on proper technique of brushing. Package was developed by analyzing the methods media and content. The third phase of the study was to implement and evaluate of the oral health education package. Package was implemented in 2 school among those 5 school where the baseline was conducted and remain 3 school were considered as control school. From the analysis of comparison between intervention and control group the oral health education package was found to be effective in changing knowledge, belief and practice among the student in the intervention group.