Abstract
Health promotion for not only patients but also healthy people in the local community is important for dentists. Students at Hiroshima University Dental School therefore visited a local junior high school for oral health promotion. The students gave a lecture on oral health, and demonstrated plaque disclosure and brushing instructions for junior high school students. In this study, we analyzed a questionnaire survey and determined the factors related to the increase of awareness in the junior high school students. Questionnaire surveys from all 254 junior high school students after the presentation were summarized, aggregated, and analyzed with Fisher's exact test. The surveillance revealed that plaque disclosure had a striking effect on the students and the presentation increased the number of students with high awareness of oral health. Analysis with Fisher's exact test revealed that increasing the awareness of oral health was correlated with the number of students who realized their poor brushing skills after plaque disclosure (p<0.01). This is necessary to increase their awareness, although plaque disclosure had a striking effect on the students; however, no relationship was observed with the other factors. These findings indicate that the plaque-disclosing demonstration has advantages for oral health promotion in junior high schools and more advanced instruction based on plaque disclosure is considered of value to increase their awareness, contributing to oral health promotion.
