Impact of educational methods on the oral health literacy of Brazilian adolescents

Introduction: The assessment of oral health literacy (OHL) provides information that allows processing and understanding the presence of gaps in patients' basic health knowledge and, based on its analysis, designing prevention and health promotion actions.Purpose: This study evaluated the impact of educational approaches on the level of OHL of 12 to 14-year-old adolescents in two private schools in São Paulo, Brazil.Methods: It was a cross-sectional study that divided 166 participants into Group 1 (n = 45), who attended an oral hygiene lecture; Group 2 (n = 44), who played an educational interactive game; Group 3 (n = 44), who participated in the oral hygiene lecture followed by the interactive game; and Group 4 (n = 33), who received no intervention. BREALD-30 tool measured literacy initially (T0) and one month after interventions (T1). OHL scores improved in Groups 1, 2, and 3 by 7%, 11.2%, and 16.4%, respectively. Pearson’s correlation test correlated the mean scores, and one-way ANOVA measured the influence of each educational method on OHL.Results: Participants were 82 women and 84 men, and the mean age was 12.43 (± 0.74). The correlation test showed a robust coefficient (r = 0.80) for each group in the analyzed times. The analysis of variance indicated mean differences (p < 0.05) for groups that received interventions when comparing T0 and T1. However, no significance (p > 0.05) occurred between groups and sex and between groups and school grades.Conclusion: The educational measures effectively increased OHL scores, and the lecture followed by the game was the best intervention.