Children's Oral Health – Web Based Resources for Elementary School Teachers

Objectives: to conduct a needs assessment with Kindergarten and elementary school teachers in order to identify which web based resources could be used to increase their (a) awareness concerning the importance of oral health for their students' quality of life, (b) skills about how to teach oral health-related materials, and (c) knowledge about these issues.

Methods: Thirteen focus groups with 147 elementary school teachers were conducted in socio economically disadvantaged neighborhoods. The focus group discussions were audio taped, transcribed, and content analyzed with N-Vivo, a program package for the analysis of qualitative data.

Results: The analyses of the transcripts showed that teachers were not aware of (a) the high prevalence of oral disease in their students, and (b) the significant impact of poor oral health on their students' quality of life. When informed about these matters, their awareness led to strong motivation to include dental health-related materials into their teaching. However, they also reported not having sufficient background training that would have taught them the skills to engage their students in these issues, and that they lacked knowledge about this topic. They described the resources they would utilize if provided on a website. They stressed the importance of grade specific, easily accessible lesson plans and resource materials such as age appropriate computer games, word puzzles, and science experiments. A web site was constructed based on these findings.

Conclusions: The focus group results showed that teachers expressed a desire to teach about oral health-related matters when they became aware of the prevalence and impact of poor oral health among their students. They described a lack of skills, knowledge and resource material as the major barriers to actually engaging in these activities. A web site was therefore developed www.dent.umich.edu/teacheroralhealth. (This research was supported by grant # DE-14887-02 from NIDCR; PI: Inglehart).