Dental health promotion in a group of children at high risk to dental disease.
Three hundred and ten children from three schools were examined before and after a dental health promotion program targeted at one of the schools. Parents of subjects at the experimental school were visited at home by a community health worker who provided individualized information on dental services and preventive strategies. Parents of subjects at the control school were provided with similar information by way of general written documentation, not tailored to specific needs, and distributed as part of the traditional school take home system. The experimental hypothesis proposed that, at re-examination, subjects from the experimental school would show a measurable improvement in caries increment, and a reduced plaque index over subjects from the control schools. Although the individualized social intervention strategy did not demonstrate a major shift in use of dental services or improvement in health status some improvement in caries experience was obtained in the target group. The multifactorial nature of dental disease and the limited contact of the health worker with the families involved would account for the low success rate of this strategy.