Daily supervised toothbrushing may help reduce school absences
Study shows 73% of P1 children have no obvious tooth decay, compared with 58% in 2008.
Scotland’s daily supervised toothbrushing programme, Childsmile, has reduced childhood tooth decay across the population and saved on NHS treatment costs, according to an evaluation by the University of Glasgow.
The latest statistics show that 73% of Primary 1 children have no obvious tooth decay, compared with 58% in 2008, when the programme was first introduced. Additionally, recent research by the same team found that the programme may also help to reduce the number of school absences due to dental issues.
The University of Glasgow-led study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found that children with tooth decay missed on average five more half-days per year than those with healthy teeth. Children needing emergency dental treatment or general anaesthetic missed six or more extra half-days.
The study also found that children living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas of Scotland have almost double the amount of school absences related to poor oral health compared with children living in the least deprived areas.
David Conway, Professor of Dental Public Health at the University of Glasgow’s Dental School, and co-Director of Childsmile said: “The findings support the Scottish Government and NHS Scotland Childsmile programme – especially supervised daily toothbrushing in nurseries and schools, which we have shown has driven child oral health improvement across Scotland.
“Childsmile is a credit to the collaboration between health and education teams – including the dedicated work of the nursery and school staff delivering supervised daily toothbrushing. Not only can supervised daily toothbrushing improve children’s teeth it can potentially reduce school absences – giving both health and education benefits.”
The recent study was the first time the association between oral health and school absences had been evaluated using robust population-level data, from more than 260,000 children (aged 4-7) in Scotland. Overall, the analysis showed five to 6.5 more school absences for children with poor oral health versus children with none.
Dr Mariel Goulart, Research Assistant at the University of Glasgow’s Dental School, said: “Our study suggests there is a need to continue to address this area of public health in school children, with the research highlighting the need for integrating oral health initiatives within educational and public health policies to mitigate school absenteeism and address health inequalities.”
The study, ‘Poor child oral health and school absences: a population-wide data linkage study,’ is published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.
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