2019 Volume 69 Issue 1 Pages 27-33
For oral health in the workplace, dental examinations for the early detection of oral diseases have been mainly conducted. In order to shift from conventional dental examination programs to those for investigating environmental risks and promoting behavioral changes, the Japan Dental Association developed a new oral health examination, assessment, and health instruction program for adults.
The aim of this study was to evaluate how dental examination and health instruction based on this program improved health-promoting behavior compared with the traditional dental examination program.
Subjects were recruited from employees of three companies in Niigata City (n=129; 44.6±11.5 years old). They were randomly divided into an intervention group and a control group. For the intervention group, dental examination and health instruction, based on the program newly developed by the Japan Dental Association, were conducted, whereas only a dental examination was conducted for the control group. Questionnaire surveys were performed at the baseline and 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year later to evaluate behavioral changes.
As a result, “tooth brushing at the workplace and outside home”, “use of fluoride-containing dentifrice”, and “use of interdental brush or dental floss” were significantly improved in both groups. In the intervention group, changes were noted at all time points until 1 year later, but changes were limited and only seen at some time-points in the control group.
This study revealed that the conventional dental examination program only marginally improves health behavior, but the new dental examination and health instruction program more markedly improves such behavior and its effects persist for at least 1 year.
