earticle

영어

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship of an incremental school oral health program to the oral health knowledge, behavior and promotion of adolescents in a bid to prove the necessity of an incremental high school oral health program as a means to improve the oral health care of adolescents. The subjects in this study were 85 students who were in three first-year classes in a high school located in Seoul. They included 77 boys and eight girls. After oral health education was provided six times from May 28 to October 19, 2010, whether there were any changes in their oral health knowledge and oral health behavior was checked, and their S-PHP was tested. The findings of the study were as follows:
1. The oral health education served to boost the oral health knowledge of the high school students. Specifically, there were broad gaps between their pretest and posttest scores in knowledge on toothbrushing, prevention of oral diseases, periodontal diseases, dental caries, smoking and malocclusion (p<0.05).
2. The oral health education served to improve the oral health behavior of the high school students. There was the widest gap between their pretest and posttest scores in toothbrushing, followed by nutrition-related behavior, choice and keeping of a toothbrush, fluoride-related behavior, preventive behavior of oral diseases and use of oral protection devices (p<0.05).
3. The oral health education served to improve the S-PHP of the high school students. They underwent a change in toothbrushing frequency thanks to their repetitive learning, and a recurrent phenomenon took place at the same time.