Development and validation of School Oral Health Promotion Program “SOHEPP” oral health video for the training of adolescents and teachers in Ibadan, Nigeria

Presently, in Nigeria, as in many other developing countries, oral health promotion programs remain the responsibility of the public health dentists. This responsibility is now being threatened, particularly with persistent short supply of dentists in general. Recent evidence showed that peers and school-teachers trained by dentists can effectively anchor oral health promotion programs. However, the sustainability of this method of oral health promotion is further threatened by the emigration of dentists needed to train these peers and teachers. Therefore, the assessment of the feasibility of a training alternative, such as the use of pre-recorded video, has become crucial. This study reports the development and validation of an animated video as an oral health training tool for adolescents and teachers in Ibadan, Nigeria. The narrative video was developed by a team of experts from various specialties, which included public health dentists, pediatric dentists, epidemiologists, communication scientists, animation experts, dental surgery residents, a pediatric surgeon, and science educators. The steps involved in the development included pre-video production research, development of the key oral health education messages, development of the script and storyboarding, creation, design, and selection of characters, visual style decision, voice-over narration recording, production, and post-production processing. The script for the video was developed from information adopted from a manual on oral health care of students. The video produced was validated for face and content quality among dentists, teachers, and adolescents in secondary schools through individual feedback and focus group discussions. Relevant comments and observations were considered in the final editing and postproduction process to yield a final video after series of editing. The video was found to be simple to use, clearly illustrative and highly educative. This is a report on the development, production, and validation of the School Oral Health Promotion Program animated video for training adolescents and teachers.