Other
Rebecka K. Haats, DDS (she/her/hers)
PGY2 Resident
NYU Langone - Yakima
NYU Langone - Yakima
Yakima, Washington, United States
Jessica Webb, DDS
Associate Director
NYU Langone - Yakima
NYU Langone Dental Medicine
Yakima, Washington, United States
Joe Wilson, DMD
NYU Langone - Yakima
Yakima, Washington, United States
Purpose: The Early Support for Infants and Toddlers (ESIT) program at Children’s Village in Yakima, WA is a multidisciplinary early intervention team that does not currently provide oral health (OH) education or referrals. The purpose of this quality improvement study was: 1) to describe the team’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors on OH before and after a training program, 2) to evaluate the efficacy of the training provided, and 3) to identify the future needs of the team, enabling it to provide OH interventions to their clients.
Methods: A pre-training survey measured participants’ OH knowledge and current behaviors, followed by training on OH topics. A post-training survey and feedback on the training was collected; the same survey was repeated six months later.
Results: Significant increases in knowledge scores were observed immediately following the training, remaining higher than baseline knowledge scores after 6 months (P < .05). There were no significant changes to the team’s behaviors before and 6 months after the OH training (P >.331). Sample size was insufficient to evaluate whether higher knowledge scores were associated with higher behavior scores. Areas that respondents most desired additional training in included parent education (56%) and OH of children with special healthcare needs (44%). Most respondents thought that OH training should occur once a year (79%).
Conclusions: OH training improved participants’ knowledge of OH topics, but had no significant impact on behaviors. Future efforts should focus on educating the ESIT team on parent education and the OH of children with special healthcare needs.