Teaching children to take more responsibility for their own dental treatment

Inappropriate prevention and utilization behaviors can cause serious problems in all areas of health, including dental care. This paper reports on the testing of a new approach to improve appropriate dental care--teaching children to assume more responsibility for getting their own care. Results show significantly more knowledge posttreatment for children trained in an experimental group taught in this new approach, than children trained in a comparison group, only taught standard dental health education materials. Self-report and role plays showed differences between the two groups in the correct direction, although these differences were not statistically significant.