Elementary School Teachers and Children's Oral Health – Focus Group Analyses

Objectives: to explore (a) what elementary school teachers know about students' oral health concerns, (b) what they think about educating their students about oral health issues, and (c) which types of teaching resources they would like on a web site for elementary school teachers.

Methods: Focus group data were collected in 13 elementary schools in socio economically disadvantaged neighborhoods between April 24 and May 24, 2007. In total, 147 teachers participated in these focus groups. The majority of the teachers was female (88%) and white (61%). The focus group discussions were audio taped, transcribed, and content analyzed with N-Vivo, a program package for the analysis of qualitative data.

Results: Overall, the teachers were genuinely surprised when they received information about the results of oral health screenings and interviews conducted in their schools. This information about the percentages of students in their schools with (a) caries, (b) abscesses and pulpal involvement, and (c) quality of life impairments due to oral disease. The majority of teachers strongly supported to integrate information about oral health promotion into the curricula. When asked which types of resources they would actually utilize if provided on a website, they stressed the importance of grade specific easily accessible lesson plans. Resource materials such as age appropriate computer games, word puzzles, and science experiments were listed as well. Quite a substantial number of teachers stressed that they would like access to information about oral health promotion for parents on this website.

Conclusions: The focus group results showed that as soon as teachers were informed their students' need for oral health care they became strongly motivated to teach about these issues. However, they described a lack of resource material as the major barrier to actually engaging in these activities. This research was supported by grant #DE-14887-02 from NIDCR.