Objective To understand the oral health behavior, knowledge awareness and attitude of students aged 12–15 years in Hainan province and provide reference for the targeted health education and prevention of oral diseases.
Methods According to the program of the fourth national epidemiological survey of oral health, a total of 3479 students aged 12–15 years in Hainan were selected by an equal-sized stratified multistage randomly sampling. All of them were surveyed with questionnaires regarding oral health behaviors, knowledge awareness and attitude. The collected data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and χ2 test.
Results Among the students, 40.50% brushed their teeth twice a day or more, only 4.17% brushed their teeth with fluoride toothpaste and only 0.55% used flossed every day. The students who eat dessert and sweets, sweet drinks, sweetened milk and other foods once or more per day accounted for 39.15%, 27.48% and 28.08% respectively. The awareness rates of oral disease related knowledge was less than 70%, the awareness rates of “fluoride is useful for protecting teeth” and “pits and fissure sealing can protect teeth” were 29.58% and 12.96%, respectively. For oral health concept, 61.54% of them agreed that “regular oral examination is very necessary” and more than 90% answered the other three questions correctly. In general, the oral health behavior, knowledge awareness and attitude of the urban students were better than those of the rural students, and the girl students had better oral health concept compared with boy students.
Conclusion The 12–15 year old students in Hainan have poor oral health behaviors, poor diet habits, insufficient knowledge awareness of oral diseases, and it is necessary to improve their knowledge awareness of oral health. New targeted oral health intervention measures should be developed according to the urban-rural and gender specific differences in oral health behavior and knowledge awareness of students.
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