"Safeguard Your Smile" an Oral Health Literacy Intervention Promoting Positive Oral Hygiene Self-care Behavior Among Punjabi Immigrants: A Randomized Controlled Trial

There will be 140 participants in this study who will be randomly allocated into either intervention group (70) or control group (70).The intervention group will receive one hour long "Safeguard Your Smile" intervention and control group will receive no intervention and only a conventional pamphlet. Data will be collected at baseline and after 3 months using three research instruments. i) Oral hygiene self-care knowledge and oral hygiene self-care behavior will be assessed using self administered questionnaire. ii) Using Loe and Sillness indices, plaque and gingival index scores will be measured. iii) And oral health literacy of participants will be measured with the TS-REALD tool.The data analysis will include descriptive statistics and frequency tables will be provided for both baseline and endpoint data of the both groups. Continuous variables will be summarized with mean, standard deviation and range and for the categorical variables; frequency counts and percentage of subjects within each category will be provided. An array of data analysis including t-test, correlations and logistic regression will be performed assessing effectiveness of the Safeguard Your Smile intervention.