Abstract:

Introduction&Objective: Childhood caries remains a serious problem in several developing and developed countries. The education of mothers to promote healthy dietary habits in children has been the main strategy used for the prevention of childhood caries. So, in this study the effect of oral health education based on HBM for decreasing dental plaque index has been studied in mothers who had 3-6 years old children.

Methods: In this quasi- experimental study 56 mothers have been chosen who were divided in to experimental and control randomly. Baseline questionnaire was completed by two groups. Then, educational programs were done in three sessions for experimental group. After the educational programs, the questionnaire was completed again by two groups. Finally, gathered data were analyzed by SPSS software and statistical tests.

Results: After implementing educational programs, mean score of all aspects of health belief model (mother’s knowledge, perceived benefits and barriers, perceived susceptibility and perceived severity) in the experimental group had significant difference in comparison with the control group(P<0.001).

Conclusion: The result of this study has confirmed the efficiency of using health belief model in adopting preventive behaviors regarding children dental plaque in mothers who had 3-6 years old children.

Keywords:

Knowledge, Dental Plaque Index, Education, Health Belief Model.