The proposed community dental intervention trial is an exceptional opportunity to apply public health knowledge and practice to affect significant oral health behavior change and improve the oral health status of community worksite employees. This proposal uses a multi- disciplinary team to apply a successful health education and promotion intervention with an innovative oral health intervention within a community context. As new scientific knowledge and understanding abound about the nature of inflammatory processes and consequences of periodontitis on oral and systemic disease, effective strategies to prevent periodontitis become imperative. Moreover, application of those strategies to persons within their own communities rather than clinical settings offer the opportunity to accomplish broad, sustained healthy behaviors for participants and those in their arenas of influence. It is our hypothesis that markers of inflammation in the oral cavity, specifically, inflammatory mediators in gingival crevicular fluid (GCF), can be marginally reduced with introduction of individualized tailored health education and promotion messages. We further hypothesize that the introduction of a mechanical toothbrush into daily oral hygiene regimens will achieve significant sustained reduction of GCF inflammatory mediators, and thus periodontitis, above that effect achieved by education alone. The proposed experimental intervention has the potential to prevent the debilitating effects of chronic inflammatory processes of periodontitis and to intervene on its impact to systemic health in daily oral hygiene regimens without clinical intervention. Significant reductions at the individual level will coincide with reductions at the community level. Potential benefits accrue for the individual and for the workplace institution in health care cost savings. Controlled clinical trials have demonstrated that inflammatory processes of periodontitis can be significantly attenuated by the daily use of a sonic toothbrush. We propose that this association can be demonstrated in a community worksite context as well. Our team of scientists and educators are uniquely qualified to accomplish this study because of our experience in community settings, our established relationships with targeted worksites, and our expertise in longitudinal studies of periodontitis.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 70 publications
