Exploring the Impact of an Oral Health Education Program on School teachers' Knowledge and Behaviors in Iraq: A Quasi-Experimental Study.

Aim: School teachers play a fundamental role in modeling a child's overall development, including their health habits. Considering that schools occupy a large share of children's daily lives, teachers have a beneficial opportunity to foster daily dental care practices.The current investigation aimed to explore the influence of an oral health education program on school teachers' knowledge and behaviors related to oral health problem prevention. Materials and Methods: The study subjects in this experimental study included 154 primary school teachers in Kut, Iraq. Six primary schools were randomly selected via a lottery method out of 42 elementary schools situated in the city to constitute the study participants. Exhaustive information about school teachers was obtained using thorough questionnaires that involved sociodemographic properties, oral health behaviors, and an Arabic validated oral health preventive knowledge assessment. The statistical analysis included an independent sample t test, McNemar test, and paired t test. Results: The mean age of school teachers was 39.6 (±9.93). Study subjects were almost equally distributed between the age groups, with more than half having ≤10 years of teaching experience. An increase in school teachers' oral health preventive knowledge was observed after the education program, regardless of their demographic characteristics (P < 0.001). The number of teachers with correct responses about all oral health preventive statements increased after the education program. A significant improvement in teachers' oral health behaviors was observed following the educational program (P < 0.001, P < 0.05).