Oral health literacy among clients visiting a rural dental college in North India-a cross-sectional study

Topics Included in Health Literacy Studies in Asia: A Systematic Review

The study aimed to review general and specific health literacy studies in different countries in Asia to understand the progress of health literacy researches in the region. English-published studies with quantitative measurements of health literacy were collected through a systematic search in PubMed, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Web of Science, without publication dates limitation. A total of 156 articles on general health literacy, oral, mental, disease-specific health literacy, and eHealth literacy were collected. General health literacy was the most covered topic in 89 articles, followed by eHealth Literacy. Health literacy studies have been conducted in 16 countries and have been increasingly concerned in most of the countries in Asia. China had the largest number of articles, followed by Taiwan. Four studies had participants from more than one country. Education, age, health status, incomes, and living/residential area were significantly associated with health literacy levels in 156 studies, with the prevalence of 55.8%, 28.2%, 20.5%, 17.9%, and 10.9%, respectively. Lower health literacy was related to poorer health outcomes or lower quality of life in 71 studies.

Assessment of oral health knowledge, literacy, and attitude among schoolteachers towards oral health - A cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

To accomplish the purpose of health education and health promotion programs, schools are the most effective place for delivering health information to children. The main purpose of our research was to inform, gather evidence and contribute to developing knowledge regarding the OHL, knowledge, and attitude among school teachers towards oral health in Najran region of Saudi Arabia.

METHODS

A questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was conducted in Najran region of Saudi Arabia for 6 months. A stratified cluster random sampling of 252 teachers was taken to represent all the teachers of Najran region of Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire contains 2 parts, sociodemographic part that include age, gender, education, teaching level, and income of the participants. The second part contains 25 items that assess the OHL (HelD-14 questions), knowledge (6 questions), and attitude (5 questions) of the participants. SPSS software version 26 was used to enter and analyze the data (IBM SPSS, Chicago, IL, USA software version 26.0). Multiple Logistic regression was applied to check the relationship between OHL and the associated factors. The Chi-square test was applied to evaluate knowledge of study participants. The level of significance was set up at p < 0.05.

RESULTS

A total of 252 school teachers with a Mean age of school teachers 32.25 ± 8.46 participated in the study. The multiple logistic regression model shows the association between age, education, and OHL level of school teachers. After adjustment for sociodemographic factors age (OR = 0.219, 95% CI: 0.058-0.834), education (OR = 9.053, 95% CI: 1.135-72,023) were significantly associated with OHL of school teachers. Female participants showed better performance with respect to all the knowledge questions, a significantly higher level of knowledge (p-value < 0.05) was reported with all the questions except the second question (dental plaques causes). 94.8% of teachers agreed that children's teeth should be checked by a dentist on a regular basis, while 96.8% agreed that dental health education should be included in the primary school curriculum and that all teachers should receive dental health education training.

CONCLUSION

Overall, school teachers have high oral health literacy, adequate knowledge, and a positive attitude toward oral health. The female teachers had more knowledge about dentistry than their male counterparts.

Oral Health Management and Rehabilitation for Patients with Oral Cancer: A Narrative Review

Surgery is the current first choice for oral cancer treatment. Intensity-modulated radiation therapy, molecular targeted drugs, and immune checkpoint inhibitors are still used as adjuvant therapy for advanced cancer. In addition, postoperative rehabilitation and multidisciplinary treatment have also been developed in recent years. Multidisciplinary team approaches and supportive care in oral cancer treatment reportedly shorten the time to treatment and improve outcomes. Although there is enough evidence confirming the role of oral and maxillofacial surgeons, dentists, and dental hygienists in supportive care in oral cancer treatment, there are very few systematic studies. In particular, oral health management is a concept that encompasses oral function management, oral hygiene management, and oral care during oral cancer treatment. We provide a narrative review focusing on oral health management from a multidisciplinary and supportive care perspective, applicable in oral cancer treatment.

Health literacy in communication, decision-making and outcomes among cancer patients, their families and clinicians in India: A multicentre cross-sectional qualitative study

OBJECTIVE

Cancer patients in India prefer full information regarding diagnosis and prognosis, but evidence suggests poor insight. This study aimed to identify the role of health literacy among adult patients living with cancer, their families and health professionals in decision-making and treatment outcomes in India.

METHODS

This cross-sectional in-depth study recruited patients, families and clinicians from three centers. Inductive thematic analysis informed a novel conceptual model.

RESULTS

We recruited n = 34 cancer patients, n = 33 family members, n = 11 doctors and n = 14 nurses (N = 92). Principle emergent themes were the following: (1) Preferences and dynamics of diagnosis and prognosis disclosure, for example, the dominant preference was for families who held hope for cure to discourage disclosure; clinicians sometimes disclosed in line with perceived ability to pay for treatment. (2) Understanding of disease and its treatment options (etiology, potential trajectory, treatment options), for example, lay understandings of cancer etiology as contamination from outside the home, and reluctance of patients to ask questions of clinicians. (3) Priorities in decision-making, for example, not engaging patients due to fear of patient distress, patients initiated on anticancer treatments without knowledge or consent, pursuing futile treatments. (4) Anxieties over finances and outcomes (disclosure, decision-making, care pathways), for example, clinicians attempting to reduce families pursuing expensive and inappropriate treatment options with patients who have poor insight, catastrophic spending based on poor decisions.

CONCLUSION

The novel evidence-based health literacy model offers potential for feasible and acceptable intervention to support families in communication, disclosure and decision-making. This may improve patients' access to informed, appropriate care pathways.

Level of Patient Health Literacy and Associated Factors Among Adult Admitted Patients at Public Hospitals of West Shoa Oromia, Ethiopia

BACKGROUND

Health literacy is a capacity of individual to gain knowledge that helps to use health information in different levels as needed for self-management and to communicate with health providers. Health literacy has a significant impact on patient health outcomes. The aim of this study was to assess level of patient health literacy and associated factors among adult admitted patients at public hospitals of West Shoa zone, Oromia, Ethiopia.

METHODS

A cross-sectional, quantitative study was carried out among adult admitted patients at public hospitals of West Shoa Oromia, Ethiopia. An interviewer-administered Health Literacy Questionnaire (HLQ) instrument tool was used to assess patients' health literacy. All statistical analysis were performed using SPSS for windows program version 21.

RESULTS

A total of 403 patients participated in this study. Majority of the participants were males 235 (58.3%) and aged 40-59 years (n = 164, 40.7%). Overall, 59.1% (n = 238) of the participants have high health literacy. Those respondents who are above grade 12 (tertiary) were 2.45 times more likely to have high health literacy (AOR = 2.45, 95% CI: 1.21, 4.98) compared to those respondents not able to read and write . Participants who had age greater or equal to sixty were 65% less likely to have high health literacy (AOR: 0.35, 95% CI: 0.18, 0.70).

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

Forty percent of the participants have low health literacy. Age and education are significant factors in health literacy. Ethiopian ministry of health, Oromia regional health bureau, West shoa zonal office and healthcare professionals have to provide an intervention in enhancing the level of health literacy by mass media and written material.

Conceptual knowledge of oral health among school teachers in South India, India

Objective:

To measure conceptual oral health knowledge among school teachers using comprehensive measure of oral health knowledge (CMOHK) instrument.

Materials and Methods:

A total of 240 school teachers drawn through cluster random sampling from across Sullia taluk. Conceptual knowledge was assessed using Comprehensive measure of oral health knowledge questionnaire. Oral health status was recorded on a World Health Organization oral health assessment Proforma.

Results:

Overall distribution of CMOHK scores revealed that 106(44%) subjects had good conceptual oral health knowledge, 81(33.7%) subjects had fair and 53(22%) subjects were categorized under poor conceptual knowledge respectively. Statistically significant difference was observed for mean scores for conceptual knowledge in relation to gender (12.8v/s 15.3), in terms of type of school teachers (14.4 v/s 11.2) and in relation to age of the subjects. Primary school teachers exhibited a consistently better CMOHK scores 0.003(0.001-0.011) compared to their high school counterparts 0.003(0.001-0.012).

Conclusion:

The mean CMOHK score of this group was 12.5±1.3 and is considered to be fair. There is an inverse association between age, educational levels and income in relation to CMOHK scores.

Relationship of Oral Health Literacy with Dental Caries and Oral Health Behavior of Children and Their Parents

OBJECTIVES

This study sought to assess the relationship of oral health literacy (OHL) of parents with the decayed, missing, and filled teeth (DMFT) indices of themselves and their children.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

This cross-sectional study was performed on 258 children presenting with their parents to the Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics Departments of School of Dentistry, Tehran University of Medical Sciences in 2016. The parents were asked to fill out questionnaires related to OHL, oral health behaviors, and background information. Both parents and children were clinically examined to determine their DMFT indices according to the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria. A backward linear regression model was applied to assess the effect of demographic factors on OHL, behavioral habits, and DMFT. The Pearson's bivariate correlation was used to assess the relationship of OHL, behavioral habits, and DMFT.

RESULTS

A significant linear correlation was noted between the OHL of the parents and the number of filled teeth in children (P=0.01). Only 48.5% of the parents had adequate OHL. Children whose parents had adequate OHL had a significantly higher number of fillings (P=0.03) and fewer missing teeth (P=0.04). Children whose parents had inadequate or marginal OHL had a significantly lower number of fillings (P=0.01) and more missing teeth (P=0.03).

CONCLUSIONS

Higher OHL of parents seems to be significantly related to the mean DMFT of themselves and their children and enhances their oral health behavior. Programs must be implemented in developing countries, including Iran, to promote the OHL of parents and consequently improve the oral health status of children.

Linguistic adaptation and psychometric evaluation of original Oral Health Literacy-Adult Questionnaire (OHL-AQ)

INTRODUCTION

Linguistically adapted oral health literacy tools are helpful to assess oral health literacy among local population with clarity and understandability. The original oral health literacy adult questionnaire, Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire, was given in English (2013), consisting of 17 items under 4 domains. The present study rationalizes to culturally adapt and validate Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire into Hindi language. Thus, we objectified to translate Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire into Hindi and test its psychometric properties like reliability and validity among primary school teachers.

METHODS

The Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire was translated into Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire - Hindi Version using the World Health Organization recommended translation back-translation protocol. During pre-testing, an expert panel assessed content validity of the questionnaire. Face validity was assessed on a small sample of 10 individuals. A cross-sectional study was conducted (June-July 2015) and OHL-AQ-H was administered on a convenient sample of 170 primary school teachers. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were assessed using Cronbach's alpha and Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC), respectively, with 2 weeks interval to ascertain adherence to the questionnaire response. Predictive validity was tested by comparing OHL-AQ-H scores with clinical indicators like oral hygiene scores and dental caries scores. The concurrent and discriminant validity was assessed through self-reported oral health and through negative association with sociodemographic variables. The data was analyzed by descriptive tests using chi-square and bivariate logistic regression in SPSS software, version 20 and p<0.05 was considered as the significance level.

RESULTS

The mean OHL-AQ-H score was 13.58±2.82. ICC and Cronbach's alpha for Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire - Hindi Version were 0.94 and 0.70, respectively. Comparisons of varying levels of oral health literacy with self-reported oral health established significant concurrent validity (p=0.01). Significant predictive validity was observed between OHL-AQ-H scores and clinical parameters like oral hygiene status (p=0.005) and dentition status (p=0.001).

CONCLUSION

The translated and culturally adapted Oral Health Literacy Adult Questionnaire - Hindi Version indicated good reliability and validity among primary school teachers to assess oral health literacy among Hindi speaking population. Hence, improving OHL levels and implementing education oriented policies can improve the quality of life.