Stella Y. L. Kwan

Health-promoting schools: an opportunity for oral health promotion

Schools provide an important setting for promoting health, as they reach over 1 billion children worldwide and, through them, the school staff, families and the community as a whole. Health promotion messages can be reinforced throughout the most influential stages of childrens lives, enabling them to develop lifelong sustainable attitudes and skills. Poor oral health can have a detrimental effect on childrens quality of life, their performance at school and their success in later life. This paper examines the global need for promoting oral health through schools. The WHO Global School Health Initiative and the potential for setting up oral health programmes in schools using the health-promoting school framework are discussed. The challenges faced in promoting oral health in schools in both developed and developing countries are highlighted. The importance of using a validated framework and appropriate methodologies for the evaluation of school oral health projects is emphasized.

Parental Smoking Practices and Caries Experience in Pre–School Children

Voluntary and involuntary smoking influence general health. Links between voluntary smoking and oral health are confirmed for periodontal diseases and oral cancer/precancer. Since recent reports have suggested an association between parental smoking and caries experience in young children, this study aimed to explore varying patterns of parental smoking, adjusted for social class, with caries prevalence, using data derived from the UK National Diet and Nutrition Survey (1995). Data analysis was confined to 749 children aged 3.0–4.5 years, to avoid confounding effects of unerupted teeth. Bivariate analysis indicated that the prevalence of maternal rather than paternal smoking was significantly related to caries and substantially attenuated social class differences. The reported number of cigarettes smoked was not important. To compensate for the association between social class and maternal smoking, data were dichotomised by social class (manual/non–manual). With caries prevalence as the dependent variable, logistic regression analysis recorded maternal smoking as a significant independent variable in each case, with odds ratios of 1.55/1.96, respectively. The process was repeated for the combined dataset, using the more extensive (six) social class categories. This further analysis yielded an odds ratio for maternal smoking of 1.54 compared with 1.46 for social class. Nutrition status (as growth parameters) and dietary intake (as household spending on confectionery) were not significant independent variables in these equations. The rationale for these findings is discussed. Further research is required to determine mechanisms underlying these observations. It is concluded that maternal smoking is a significant factor to be considered as an additional risk indicator beyond social class when predicting caries risk in young children.

Meeting oral health information needs of the Chinese community in the UK

AbstractPoor oral health and low dental awareness among Chinese people in the UK have been reported. The provision of oral health education for the Chinese appears to be inadequate. Existing materials fail to take their needs and demands into account. This study described a process in the production of dental health education materials acceptable to the Chinese community. To inform the development of the materials, a qualitative assessment using six focus groups was conducted separately according to age (teenager, adult, elderly) and gender. This was followed by a quota sample survey of 156 Chinese people using standardised semi-structured questionnaires. Both qualitative and quantitative analyses identified poor knowledge of dental disease; distinctive oral health beliefs; and negative attitudes towards dentists and obtaining dental care. In each case, however, there were marked variations between groups categorised by age and education. The most popular dental health topics requested included general de...