Effectiveness of a Oral Health Promotion Training Package Among School Teachers

Objectives: The training of trainers was undertaken to assess the knowledge, attitude, approach and actions change of nationwide school teachers towards oral health and equip them with knowledge on healthy oral structures and common dental problems that occur in childhood and the skills to educate their fellow teachers and school children on the measures to prevent these.

This study is the first part of a yearlong follow-up study which will assess the long term impact of training on the enhancement of the skill set of these professionals in training others about oral health at the interval of six months and one year.
Methods:
Purposive sampling was employed wherein the selection of school teachers was done by the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD).

A self administered, 28 item questionnaire was designed in the English language and made in the form of Google documents.

The training programme was carried out in phases:
Phase 1: Need Assessment

Phase 2: Pre Training Assessment

Phase 3: Oral Health Education Program

Phase 4: Post Training Assessment

Ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Board of AIIMS, New Delhi (IEC- 333/03.05.2019).
Results: The results unveils the comparative assessment of the pre and post training mean - oral health knowledge score of government school teachers and it was found that the increase in knowledge of teachers was highly significant (P=0.001). A significant up gradation of knowledge was observed in all the participants irrespective of gender, age groups and teaching experience (P=0.001).
Conclusions: The utilization of teaching professionals for oral health promotion and education can aid as a valuable tool for population based oral health promotion approaches and the ultimate objective of achieving oral health for all.