200 - Parental Knowledge and Attitude Change Following Caries Counseling via Telehealth

Purpose: To assess parental knowledge and attitude change following dental caries counseling delivered via telehealth.

Methods: Parent-child dyads recruited from the College of Dental Medicine community clinic included children 2-6 years old (ASAI/II) with evidence of ECC and waitlisted to receive dental care under GA between January and December 2021. Following consent, an English/Spanish 53-item questionnaire collecting demographic characteristics and assessing parental knowledge and attitudes towards caries and telehealth acceptability was administered to parents. A 45-minute caries counseling intervention was administered using a secure video conferencing platform using interactive theory-based touchscreen tablet-based application designed to assess caries risk factors and reduce risk-related behaviors through tailored intervention. Three to five weeks after the intervention, a post-questionnaire was administered to parents by telephonic means. Results of pre- and post-questionnaires were analyzed with paired t-tests comparing four domains: caries beliefs, caries prevention, dietary risks, and outcome expectations.

Results: Of the 86 parents invited to participate, 20 (23%) completed the e-consent. Among consented participants, 17 (85%) completed the intervention and 16 of those (94%) completed the follow-up telehealth visit. Both the caries belief and caries prevention domains saw a statistically significant change from pre- to post-intervention, with the average number of correctly answered questions increasing from 3 to 5.2 (p < .001) and 7.56 to 9.38 (p < .0459), respectively. Dietary risks and outcome expectation domains also had an average increase in number of correct responses, although not statistically significant.

Conclusions: Caries counseling via telehealth intervention effectively improved parental knowledge regarding caries prevention and beliefs about caries. Observed increases in average knowledge and beliefs in all four domains post-intervention may support continuation of this study with a larger sample size to achieve significance and assess if this intervention can effectively enhance the oral health of children at high risk for caries.