A comparison of the effectiveness of the "Toothkeeper" and a traditional dental health education program

A study was made of the effectiveness of two dental health education programs in an elementary school in Flint, Michigan. Following stratification by grades, random assignments of students were made by classrooms to either the Toothkeeper group or a "Traditional" group. No control groups were employed. Separate in-service training workshops were attended by the classroom teachers according to the education program to which they had been randomly assigned. An intensive 16-week program was conducted by the classroom teachers following the guidelines of the two programs. Dental examinations which included an assessment of plaque and gingivitis scores were conducted on all participants at baseline, at the end of 16 weeks, and at the conclusion of the school year, some seven months after the initiation of the program. Only minimal reductions in plaque scores were observed with either program and little comparative difference was found in the two programs at the end of the evaluation period. The Toothkeeper group experienced a somewhat greater reduction in plaque scores than the "Traditional" group during the intensive 16-week phase of the study, but these scores worsened from this time to the end of the school year. Gingivitis scores demonstrated more improvement than the reductions in plaque scores would indicate and may be related to the confounding factor of large numbers of children receiving dental treatment, especially prophylaxes during the course of this study. Differences in reductions in gingivitis between the two programs were not meaningful clinically.