Association between oral health knowledge attitude and practices of government primary school teachers

Abstract

Oral health is an integral part of general health and imparting oral health education at younger age can prevent common oral diseases in later age. The school-going age is the most influential period of a child’s life and it is this period during which the children develop skills, beliefs and attitudes which they practice throughout their lives. Teachers play a vital role in shaping the behavior and overall comprehensive development of school children.10 Therefore, engagement of teachers in health promotion programmes can hypothetically lead to improvement of health in children. A Web Based Questionnaire Study was conducted among Teachers in Government Primary Schools in Indore district. A total of 1404 teachers from 615 government primary school out of which 1200 teachers were willing to participate in the study were included. Permission and informed consent was obtained prior to study. The data on oral health knowledge, attitude, practice and their oral health related quality of life of teachers will be collected through online questionnaire using pretested proforma. Questions included in the questionnaire were taken from previously published studies. Majority of the participants in the present study were in the age group of 40-50 years with a total of 555(46.3%). Among gender males (56.5%) are more than females (43.5%). For the qualification variable most of them are post graduate in qualification (38.9%). Greater proportion of the school teachers were teaching Hindi subject (46.8%), had 10-20 years’ experience in teaching (44.5%). Among the region most of them are from rural region with 71.3% Majority of the participants reported positive attitude towards exclusion of unhealthy foods from school premises (98.1%), inclusion of oral health topics in the school curriculum (98.8%), teachers being an oral health educator (83.8%) and role model for the children (98.8%) and the importance of oral health for overall health (95.3%). The present study was conducted with the aim to evaluate the oral health knowledge, attitude and practices of Government Primary School Teachers and to determine the association among these factors with oral health related quality of life.