Does Promoting Oral Health in Schools Reduce Tooth Decay?

Various studies on school-based dental health programs have shown how effective they can be in reducing tooth decay in elementary-aged children. Now, research is expanding to see if similar programs can also help children in middle school. Dental problems are a significant contributor to children being out of school for pain and discomfort. Data also shows that children who do not receive good oral healthcare can have diminished health later in life.

How Effective are Oral Health Education Programs?

School-based dental programs are important, especially in low-income areas where parents may not have the means to take their children to a dentist.

The researchers will use the more than $400,000 NIH grant to survey school sealant program directors and state oral health directors around the United States to determine how they are using school-based sealant programs and then dive into data on children’s teeth.

However, most of these programs are in elementary schools and what we don’t know is how it looks different in a middle school. The new research hypothesis is that perhaps children’s first molars are in better shape because they’re more likely to get sealed in these school-based programs and the second molars, those that typically come in between the ages of 11 and 13, are not.

Researchers will use data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which details children’s teeth including those that have sealants, have decay, and that is missing, in addition to demographic data.

Once the research team has analyzed the CDC data and survey results, they will build a simulation model to see what the likely benefit would be of increasing school-based sealant programs for middle schoolers.

Once the simulation model is built, the team will be able to estimate the impact of increasing the number of middle-school-based sealant programs on children’s teeth. If their results support the belief that more school-based sealant programs will cost-effectively improve children’s oral health, the goal is to apply for funding to help implement more programs.

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Source-Eurekalert