As children, many of us sat in classrooms watching our teacher or a nurse show us how to brush our teeth in circles, massage the gums, avoid sugary snacks, and check to see if our toothpaste contained fluoride. These school programs, often conducted only once or a couple of times a year and funded by the government, can improve children's oral health–at least temporarily studies have shown. A team of Belgian researchers took a closer look, examining these programs for a number of years to see if they were helpful or if money was going down the drain.

What the researchers wanted to know: Do school programs that promote good oral hygiene have a significant effect on children's health?

What they did: The researchers tracked 3,291 children from the Belgian state of Flanders for six years, starting in 1996. The children were 7 years old at the beginning of the study, and all received an oral hygiene lesson in school for one hour each year. Every year after the lesson, the children had a dental exam and their parents filled out a questionnaire about their teeth-cleaning and eating habits. At the beginning and end of the six-year study period, the researchers also examined and questioned 676 children of the same age who did not sit through dental hygiene classes, and used those children as a control to compare the classes' effects.

What they found: The children who participated in yearly dental health classes had the same number of cavities, on average, as those who did not participate. Cavities declined since 1996 in all the children, but dental education does not seem to have influenced that decrease. The only significant outcome that could be traced to the oral health classes was a drop in the number of between-meal snacks. Since this was not the major objective of the classes, the researchers are still looking into exactly why the class-group children ate less between meals.

What it means to you: In the grand scheme of things, the oral hygiene classes don't cost much in time or money, and have the potential to promote or at least maintain healthy dental habits. So, even though this study found a very small positive effect, it does not necessarily mean that the programs are a waste of money–they contribute to society's expectations of healthy-looking teeth, which can be a powerful incentive to brush.

Caveats: One reason that the study may have found that the classes did not have a big effect in reducing cavities is that, across the board, cavities in Belgium and most industrialized countries are already fairly rare. So, if there are few cavities to begin with, the effects of any program, no matter how good it is, are not going to be very noticeable.

Find out more: The American Dental Association has information about a variety of topics related to the health of teeth on their website, including a good page about cavities and how to prevent them.

Read the article: Vanobbergen, J., Declerck, D. Mwalili, S., Martens, L. "The Effectiveness of A Six-year Oral Health Education Programme for Primary Schoolchildren." Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology. June 2004, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp.173-182.

Abstract online: www.blackwell-synergy.com