Methods: This longitudinal survey was implemented in Finnish upper comprehensive school classes 7–9 (13−15-year-old pupils) in 2007 and in 2010 (n=970). 238 schools answered the questionnaire both years resulting 25% response rate. The questionnaire contained 32 questions concerning selling of sweet and healthy products, school policy, and decision-makers of the policy. From the nine items on the questionnaire, three variables for oral health promotion (higher score indicating better actions) were formed by weighting the response categories: Policy, Exposure and Enabling. Policy comprised of items about school’s sweet selling guidelines, their decision makers and leaving schoolyard (range 0-12). Exposure included items about selling soft drinks, sweets and other sweet products such as cakes, donuts, cookies or juice (range 0-10). Enabling contained items about accessibility of drinking water, healthy snack and xylitol products (range 0-10). Mean values for the Policy, Exposure and Enabling variables were calculated, and the statistical significances of the changes were analysed using nonparametric Wilcoxon’s test.
Results: The mean score of Policy increased form 5.28 to 6.00 (p<0.001) in 2007 and 2010, respectively. The mean score of Exposure increased from 7.41 to 8.59 (p<0.001) and the mean score of Enabling increased from 4.76 to 5.00 (p=0.047).
Conclusion: It seems that national recommendation can make oral-health-promoting policies healthier and strengthen schools’ practical actions related to oral health promotion.