ความรอบรู้ด้านสุขภาพช่องปากและปัจจัยที่สัมพันธ์กับพฤติกรรมการป้องกัน โรคฟันผุในนักเรียนชั้นมัธยมศึกษาตอนต้น เขตชนบท จังหวัดอุบลราชธานี

Kittiya Srimarit; Niyom  Junnual

Authors

Kittiya Srimarit Sirindhorn College of Public Health, Ubon Ratchathani
Niyom Junnual College of Medicine and Public health, Ubon Ratchathani University

Keywords:

oral health literacy, dental caries prevention behavior, junior high school students

Abstract

This cross-sectional analytical study aimed to study the level of oral health literacy, level of dental caries prevention behavior, and factors related to caries prevention behaviors among junior high school students in rural areas, Ubon Ratchathani Province, Thailand. A multistage random sampling of 402 students from 18,042 students was conducted. Data were collected using an oral health literacy questionnaire. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics. We analyzed factors related to dental caries prevention behavior by multiple regression analysis. .

The results showed that a little over half of participants were male (50.75%), average age was 13.97 years, 39.80% were studying at the Mathayom 2 level (2^nd year of junior high school). Most of their parents (63.43%) were employed in agriculture, 49.75% completed primary education. Most of the students (55.47%) did not live with their parents. 81.84% went to dental services only when they had abnormal symptoms. Almost half of them (48.25%) went to the sub-district health promoting hospitals. Most of them utilized universal health coverage to pay for their dental care (96.27%). 75.37% of participants had the dental caries prevention behaviors at a moderate level. 70.90% of them had overall oral health literacy at a moderate level. The variables related to dental caries prevention behavior included cognitive and information comprehension skills (B = -0.73, 95%CI = -0.90, -0.57), living with parents (B = 3.53, 95%CI = 1.12, 5.93), and receiving dental services at school (B = 5.86, 95%CI = 1.44, 10.28). All independent variables accounted for 20 percent of the variation in caries prevention behavior scores.

Therefore, relevant agencies should promote learning by providing information on dental caries to parents as well as caregivers who are not directly parents to encourage students to have good dental caries prevention behaviors. Our findings also support having a mobile dental unit at the school to help promote the prevention of caries in this age group to reduce the incidence of caries in permanent teeth, and help reduce the cost of dental services.

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