A supervised toothbrushing intervention trial in Northland New Zealand school children

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There are still clear inequalities in the oral health of New Zealanders, with Maori and low socio-economic families experiencing a high proportion of oral disease, mainly dental decay. The Northland population has high proportions of Maori and low socioeconomic status people; dental disease rates in children in Northland, which has no fluoridated water supply, are the highest in the country. Tooth brushing with fluoride toothpaste reduces the incidence of dental decay significantly. Studies supervising children to brush in schools have shown measurable improvements in oral health, including a pilot study in Northland. A larger scale study is needed to reach more children and to examine the feasibility of tooth brushing interventions throughout New Zealand. The proposed research is a supervised tooth brushing trial of Intermediate-aged school children in Northland with high caries experience. All children will undergo routine dental examinations at the beginning of the study. Children will be allocated to two different arms the intervention where they will have a supervised brushing session with 1450ppm fluoride toothpaste each school day and the control where they will do as usual. Examinations will be repeated annually until they complete Intermediate school. Data will be collected to analyse oral health outcomes, and the relative cost of this programme against the current model of treating dental disease. Data will show if a brushing programme is more effective for a population suffering from high levels of dental disease. Health and Disability Ethics Committee (HDEC) Northern A Health and Disability Ethics Committee (14/NTA/176).

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