Method: OHLI and oral health knowledge test developed by Sabbahi et al. were translated from English to Russian language. Necessary modifications were made to adapt them to characteristics of routine dental services in Belarus. The scores of OHLI and oral health knowledge test, grading from 0 to 100 for both tests, were calculated in the same way as the original English version. A convenience sample of patients who visited municipal dental clinic in Mar’ina Gorka, Belarus in January 2013 was used for the study. Participants completed self-administered OHLI and oral health knowledge test in Russian.
Result: Participants were 30 adult patients aged 19 to 69 years with mean age of 37.6±12.4 years; 73% of them were female. The Cronbach’s alpha for OHLI and knowledge test were 0.811 and 0.787, respectively. The mean OHLI score was high (80.5±10.0); 73% of participants had adequate (scores from 75 to 100), 27% marginal (60-74), and none of them demonstrated inadequate (0-59) levels of oral health literacy. On the other hand, mean oral health knowledge test score was moderate (69.0±19.2); 47% of participants had adequate (75-100), 20% marginal (60-74), and 33% inadequate (0-59) levels of oral health knowledge. There was no significant correlation between OHLI and oral health knowledge test (Spearman’s rho=0.275, p=0.141).
Conclusion: Oral health literacy level for Belarusian adults was good, while oral health knowledge was not sufficient. This is partly can be explained because oral health knowledge test used appeared to be too difficult for current sample. Further investigation with bigger sample size is necessary to study an association of oral health knowledge with oral health literacy.