School dental health education on oral hygiene status in Brazilian Quilombolas: a prospective study

We evaluated a school dental health education on the oral hygiene status in Quilombolas of the Brazilian Amazon. This is a prospective study. We included schoolchildren aged from 5 to 12 years and carried out an oral health education program for 4 months, totaling eight workshops held in the community school that provided physical structure and material resources for their development. We evaluated oral hygiene before and after the intervention period through clinical examination with the instrument Oral Hygiene Index Simplified (OHI-S) is the combination of bacterial plaque indices. Before the intervention, all schoolchildren were instructed to use the plaque-revealing tablet after unsupervised toothbrushing and before any oral hygiene guidance given by the dentist who conducted the playful workshops on the premises of the school. Quantitative variables (OHI-S and age) with normal distribution (p > 0.05, Shapiro-Wilk test) are presented as means and standard deviations. Those with non-normal distribution (p < 0.05, Shapiro-Wilk test) are presented as medians and 25-75 percentiles. The Wilcoxon signed rank test was used for within-group comparisons. We observed a significant difference in the mean scores of the oral hygiene index simplified (p < 0.001) before and after the intervention and 56.25% of the participants improved their oral hygiene condition. The results of this study provide evidence to support the importance of personalized educational initiatives to promote oral health in marginalized groups. However, it is important to recognize the limitations of the study, such as the relatively small sample size and the lack of a control group, which may require further investigation in future research.