HYBRID EVENT: You can participate in person at Singapore or Virtually from your home or work.

10th Edition of International Conference on
Dentistry and Oral Health

March 13-15, 2025 | Rome, Italy
Dental 2023

Seham Mohamed

Seham Mohamed, Speaker at Dental Conferences
University of Bahrain, Bahrain
Title : Are oral health conditions associated with children’s school performance and school attendance in the Kingdom of Bahrain? A Life course approach

Abstract:

Background: The link between oral health conditions (OHCs) and school performance and attendance remain unclear among Middle Eastern children. The association has been studied extensively in the Western region; however, several concerns have been raised regarding the reliability and validity of measures, low quality of studies, inadequate inclusion of potential confounders, and the lack of a conceptual framework. These limitations have meant that, to date, there has been no detailed understanding of the association or of the key social, clinical, behavioural and parental factors which may impact the association.

Aim: To examine the association between OHCs and children’s school performance and school attendance at Grade 2 in Muharraq city in the Kingdom of Bahrain (KoB) using Heilmann et al.’s (2015) life course framework for oral health (OH).

Objectives: To  

  • Describe the prevalence of OHCs among 7-8 years old schoolchildren of the good, rated schools in the city of Muharraq.
  • Analyze the social, biological, behavioral, and parental pathways that link early and current life exposures with children’s current OHCs by testing the critical, and the accumulation life course models with consideration of social determinants of OH.
  • Examine the association between OHCs and school performance and school attendance among schoolchildren including the direct and indirect (mediated) pathways;
  • Explore the early and current life course social, biological, behavioral and parental factors associated with children’s school outcomes in addition to OHCs.

Design: A time-ordered-cross-sectional study was conducted with 466 schoolchildren aged 7-8 years and their parents from Muharraq city in KoB. Data were collected through parents’ self-administered questionnaires, children’s face-face interviews, and dental clinical examinations. Outcome variables, including school performance and school attendance data, were obtained from the parents and school records. The data were analysed using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling (SEM).

Results: Dental caries, the consequence of dental caries (PUFA/pufa), and enamel developmental defects (EDD) prevalence were 93.4%, 25.7%, and 17.2%, respectively. The findings from the SEM showed that children born in families with high SES were less likely to suffer from dentine dental caries (β= -0.248) and more likely to earn high school performance (β= 0.136) at 7-8 years of age in Muharraq. From the current life course of children, the dental plaque was associated significantly and directly with enamel caries (β= 0.094), dentine caries (β= 0.364), treated teeth (filled or extracted because of dental caries) (β= 0.121), and indirectly associated with dental pain (β= 0.057). Further, dentine dental caries was associated significantly and directly with low school performance (β= -0.155). At the same time, the dental plaque was indirectly associated with low school performance via dental caries (β = −0.044). Conversely, treated teeth were associated directly with high school performance (β= 0.100). Besides OHCs, parents' early and current SES were significantly and indirectly associated with children's school performance via parental characteristics (β= 0.457). Notably, none of the OHCs, biological, SES, behavioural, or parental conditions was related to school attendance in children.

Conclusion: The life course approach was adequate to examine the role of OHCs on children’s school performance and attendance. Birth and current (7-8-year-olds) social factors were significant predictors of poor OH and poor school performance. Dental caries was associated with poor school performance but not with school attendance. Treated dental caries was associated with good school performance.

Biography:

Dr Seham A.S Mohamed (PhD in Dental Public health 2022, University of Sheffield, UK) is the Dental Hygiene program coordinator at the University of Bahrain. She worked as a Dental Hygienist at different government health centres, at a private general dental clinic, with a periodontist, and as a trainee teaching staff at the College of Health Sciences Dental Hygiene Program. She has earned an Associate Diploma in Dental Hygiene from the College of Health Sciences, Bahrain; a B.S. in Allied Dental Sciences at Jordan University of Sciences and Technology; a Master's and PhD in Dental Public from the University of Sheffield, UK. She has approximately 8- years of undergraduate teaching experience. Her area of research expertise focused on preventing and controlling dental diseases and promoting the community's oral health. She published a few original articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Watsapp