Associations between school aspects and child oral and general health

Objectives: Schooling forms a large part of a child’s life experience and characteristics of schools have been associated with various health outcomes. The association between aspects of schools and child oral and general health outcomes were assessed for a sample of children from NSW, SA and ACT.
Methods: Parents of a random sample of 3,044 children aged 9-14 years responded to self-complete surveys. Parents rated child’s oral and general health on 5-point Likert-type scales, dichotomised to good/fair/poor vs excellent/very good. Parent perceptions of their child’s school were also collected. Administrative data were collected from the MySchool website for participating schools. Multilevel, multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted on parent ratings of good/fair/poor child oral health and general health, using child sociodemographic information, MySchool school information and parent perception of schools at the individual (collected) level and at the school level (amalgamated).
Results: Reference models showed a significant school-level variance in child general (Median Odds Ratio 1.41) and oral health (MOR 1.18). After controlling for all other variables, a good/fair/poor rating of child general health was associated negatively with parent perceptions of the school social environment (Odds Ratio 0.59 good, 0.41 good-medium vs poor). For child oral health, a good/fair/poor rating was associated negatively with parent perceptions of the school at the individual level; social environment (OR 0.70 good, 0.59 good-medium vs poor), health promoting environment (OR 0.70 good vs poor), quality of buildings/grounds (OR 0.70 good vs poor) and quality of teachers (OR 0.70 medium vs poor). A school-level variable, relations, was also negatively associated with good/fair/poor child oral health (OR 0.59 good vs poor).
Conclusions: There was significant variation across schools in parent-rated child oral and general health. School aspects were associated with parental perceptions of child general and oral health, controlling for individual level factors.