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School performance indicators as proxy measures of school dental treatment needs: a feasibility study
Vanessa E Muirhead1, David Locker
1Faculty of Dentistry, University of Toronto, 124 Edward Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5G 1G6. vanessa.muirhead@utoronto.ca
Objective:
This ecological study assessed the feasibility and predictive ability of readily available educational indicators as proxy measures of school dental treatment needs in York Region elementary school children, Canada.
Method:
Data sources included York Region Dental Health Unit dental screening data (2003-2004); area-based income data from Statistics Canada (2001) based on school address postcodes; grade three and grade six school performance results in reading, writing mathematics and English as a second language (ESL) data (2003-2004) obtained from publicly accessible educational websites.
Results:
Data analyses included 219 schools. Pearson's correlations showed that schools with a higher percentage of children needing urgent dental treatment had significantly higher proportions of children scoring below provincial averages in all six school performance categories. Hierarchical stepwise multiple linear regression analysis showed that two school performance variables remained in the model after controlling for area-based median family income and ESL variables: the percentage of grade six pupils scoring below the provincial average in writing and the percentage of grade 3 pupils scoring below the provincial average in reading.
Conclusions:
The study established the feasibility of using school-level school performance indicators as proxy measures of school-level dental treatment needs. School performance results were good predictors of urgent dental treatment in York Region elementary school children. Further studies are needed using data from other jurisdictions to determine the utility of educational indicators in oral health programs.
