Dental Public Health Warrior Project : Attempt to Increase Awareness of Preschool Children's Dental Health

Abstract

The Dental Public Health Warrior (DPHW) project is a social activity which provides a creative,fun, and interactive dental health education throughout kindergarten and elementary schools inKeputih-Surabaya, Indonesia. The aim of this study was to determine the effectivity of those projects in increasing the awarness of preschool children’s dental health. This is a pre experimental study, the ethical approval for this study has been obtained. Subjects are 462 children age 4–5 years in Keputih from 2015 to 2017. All subjects were educated by the DPHW team, pretest and post test were performed and and def-t score was collected by a calibrated dentist at the same time. Def-t data were analyzed by Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney tests. The percentage of children with free caries decrease in 2016, (from 3.3% to 3,2%) and increase in 2017 (8,3%). There’s significant difference among def-t variable (p= 0,101). There is signficant difference from pre-test to post-test in 2015 (p= 0,006), 2016 (p=0,001) and 2017 (p=0,002). The DPHW can be effectively used to increase the awareness of preschool children’s dental health in KeputihSurabaya, in Indonesia.