The School Environment and Oral Health Education at Public Education Institutions

Emilia María Ochoa Acosta

Universidad de Antioquia

Ofelia Roldán Vargas

Universidad de Manizales

Ángela María Franco Cortés

Universidad de Antioquia.

Blanca Susana Ramírez Puerta

Universidad de Antioquia

Olga Lucía Mejía Pineda

Secretaría de Salud de Medellín

Introduction: the objective of this work was to understand the progress attained by the educational community in appropriation and commitment to the process of oral health promotion and education, and in identifying school environmental conditions that favor or impede implementation of the actions proposed in the framework of the “Healthy Schools” strategy of the Secretariat of Health of Medellín.

Methods: qualitative study with a hermeneutic approach and method. To gather the information, five focus groups were formed with educators from the first and third grades of basic primary education; five in-depth interviews were held with teaching administrators and two interviews with third-grade children in basic primary education. The analysis was based on inductive logic and the work was performed on three levels: identification of regularities, categorization of information and construction of meaning.

Results: the information is organized into three categories of analysis and their respective trends, particularly: responsibility in health, a commitment by all educational actors; timid inclusion of oral health as a curricular initiative, and programmatic interference by the school dynamic, which negatively affects the success of cooperative work.

Conclusion: through the implementation of health strategies in the schools, progress has been achieved, particularly from the standpoint of combining health and education as broadly transcendent social sectors in order to facilitate the appropriation of health actions. Nonetheless, oral health initiatives have not been consolidated in day-to-day school life.

Keywords: education, oral health, school.

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Published
2014-12-30
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The School Environment and Oral Health Education at Public Education Institutions. (2014). Revista Nacional De Odontología, 10(19), 47-54. https://doi.org/10.16925/od.v10i19.847
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