Effectiveness of educational WhatsApp messages compared to conventional oral health education on mother’s knowledge, perception and practices of their child’s oral health in Belagavi City- A Randomized controlled trial.

Need for the study:

Childhood oral health problems may result into the severe impairment of both general and oral health and as its prevalence in most of the countries is high it can be viewed as a relevant public health problem. Dental caries is a universally prevalent chronic disease and globally, around 486 million children suffer from caries of the primary teeth.

Children have a greater incidence of carious lesions as they reach school age, mostly due to irregular and ineffective oral hygiene habits and frequent snacking rich in carbohydrate and sugar.

Family is the first institution that influences the child behaviour and development. Hence their health beliefs and attitude towards oral health care acts as a significant predictor of children’s oral health.By implementing the oral health care strategies involving the parents, it is hoped that the goal of having pre-school children free from oral diseases will become a reality one day.

Mobile health (mHealth) has enormous potential for conducting personalized approaches to disease prevention and management.

Mobile devices allow low-cost interventions and are a means of providing individual level support to health care consumers in order to increase healthy behaviour.

Currently, WhatsApp Messenger (WhatsApp Inc.) is one of the most popular mobile apps worldwide, with approximately 300 million users. It has shown to be a promising tool for the communication between patients and professionals, aiding in the spread of health-related information.

Therefore the present study aims to provide oral health education to mothers of preschool children in Belagavi city via WhatsApp messaging.

Hypothesis:

Null Hypothesis:

There is no difference between the impact of conventional oral health education and educational WhatsApp messages on  mother’s knowledge and practices of their child’s oral health.

Alternate Hypothesis:

There is a difference between the impact of conventional oral health education educational WhatsApp messages on mother’s knowledge and practices of their child’s oral health.

Aim of the study:

To assess and compare the effectiveness of educational WhatsApp messages and conventional oral health education on mother’s knowledge and practices of their child’s oral health.

Objectives:

To assess and compare the knowledge, perception and practices of mothers regarding their child’s oral health before and after intervention in the experimental and control group.

To assess oral health status of preschool children before and after intervention in the experimental and control group.

Methodology

Selection of the study subjects will be done based on two stage sampling technique and subjects fulfilling inclusion and exclusion criteria will be considered.

Baseline assessment using Questionnaire followed by oral health education.

Educational Oral health messages  will be sent fortnightly for 4 months in the intervention group and conventional oral health education to the control group.

Reassessment after 4 months using same questionnaire.