Oral Health Promotion: Youth as Agents Of Change

Overview

This upstream communication study may aid in our understanding of the nature of the parent-adolescent relationship and how we can use this relationship to promote better oral health of the parents and adolescents.

Study Type

  • Study Type: Interventional
  • Study Design
    • Allocation: Randomized
    • Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
    • Primary Purpose: Health Services Research
    • Masking: None (Open Label)
  • Study Primary Completion Date: October 2021

Detailed Description

Given the proliferation of social media as a tool for health communication, this proposed pilot study will be conducted with adolescents and their parents in the greater Richmond area, including Petersburg, and examines whether disseminating oral health information to adolescents via Facebook will have a greater impact on their sharing of the message to their parents than providing them the information in written format- using a pamphlet. We hypothesize that parents in the Facebook arm of the intervention will be more likely to report receiving the oral health message from their child than those in the pamphlet arm. Further, this study investigates whether parents whose adolescents re provided the information via Facebook will have greater increase in intent to schedule dental appointments and dental appointment scheduling behaviors than parents whose children are in the pamphlet group. We hypothesize that parents in the Facebook group will report greater increase in dental appointment scheduling than those whose adolescents are in the pamphlet group. Lastly, we would like to explore whether parents and adolescents in the Facebook arm will have greater increase in oral health knowledge and greater decreases in perceived barriers to oral health activities, both which may be related to increases in parents' dental appointment scheduling.

Interventions

  • Behavioral: Social media
    • Provided pamphlet and a private Facebook group where informational messages and content relating to oral health will be shared

Arms, Groups and Cohorts

  • No Intervention: Pamphlet
    • Provided with only a pamphlet containing educational material about oral health
  • Experimental: Social media
    • Provided pamphlet containing educational material about oral health and will have access to a private Facebook group, where we will share informational messages and content relating to oral health

Clinical Trial Outcome Measures

Primary Measures

  • Communication
    • Time Frame: 8 weeks
    • Sharing of health information measured as a count of shared oral health messages reported on a survey question.
  • Appointment – child
    • Time Frame: 8 weeks
    • Number of child dental appointments scheduled based on self-report
  • Appointment – adult
    • Time Frame: 8 weeks
    • Number of adult dental appointments scheduled based on self-report

Secondary Measures

  • Oral health knowledge
    • Time Frame: Baseline to 8 weeks
    • Change in number of correct responses on a 12 item oral health knowledge and screening survey
  • Perceived barriers
    • Time Frame: Baseline to 8 weeks
    • Change in number of barriers to oral health activities

Participating in This Clinical Trial

Inclusion Criteria

  • enrolled in grades 7 through 12 – between the ages of 12 and 18 – currently living in the same household as their legal guardian(s) who agree to participate in this study – live in the greater Richmond and Petersburg area – uses a smartphone – has not had a dental appointment in the past 6 months Exclusion Criteria:

  • not between the ages of 12 and 18 – do not live with their legal guardian (s) – are not residents of the greater Richmond and Petersburg area – have had a dental appointment in the past six months – legal guardian does not agree to participate

Gender Eligibility: All

Minimum Age: 12 Years

Maximum Age: 18 Years

Are Healthy Volunteers Accepted: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Investigator Details

  • Lead Sponsor
    • Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Collaborator
    • DentaQuest Institute, Inc.
  • Provider of Information About this Clinical Study
    • Sponsor
  • Overall Official(s)
    • Maghboobah Mosavel, MD, Principal Investigator, Virginia Commonwealth University

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