Abstract
Objectives : Children who are users of local children's centers are mostly in the lower income brackets or raised by single parents or grandparents. Their parents are usually careless about them, or they are placed in tough environments. Specifically, they are unlikely to be taught at home to brush their teeth on a regular basis. The purpose of this study was to examine the oral health education experiences of teachers at local children's centers and the reality of oral health care provided by them to children, and to pave the way for the development of collaborative oral health education programs by local children's centers and local communities. Methods : The subjects in this study were teachers who worked at 158 local children's centers located in Gyeongnam Province. Each teacher was asked to fill out the given a questionnaire at the centers. The survey was conducted by phone or in person from February 26 to April 1, 2009. The collected data were analyzed with SPSS 15.0 program, and statistical data on frequency and percentage were acquired to find out the general characteristics of the teachers. And crosstabulation was utilized to look for connections between oral health education experiences and actual oral health care. Results : At the 158 local children's centers, 21 teachers had ever learned about oral health education to provide children with that, and 137 teachers hadn't. The local children's centers that the former worked for had more interest in dental caries, and those centers had children do toothbrushing more than the other centers at which the latter served. Conclusions : It seems that local children's centers and local communities should make concerted efforts to develop joint education programs.