Evaluation of short term impact of two training packages on oral health knowledge and skills of Anganwadi workers of a Northern City of India: Before and after comparison study

Abstract

Introduction: Despite a serious public health problem, oral hygiene is largely ignored by community. Anganwadi workers (AWWs) can be trained on oral hygiene so that they disseminate information to a wider section of society. Objective: To compare the impact of two oral hygiene training packages on the knowledge and skills of AWW of Chandigarh. Materials and Methods: Before and after comparison study was conducted on AWWs of Chandigarh. The AWWs of Project-1 (n = 112) were provided with knowledge based training package and AWWs of Project-2 (n = 98) were provided with skill based training package. The difference between two packages was analyzed using Chi-square test and difference-in-difference analysis of group scores. Results: The pre-posttraining difference of a number of respondents scoring <22 in the knowledge domain was 43% (pretraining - 11% and posttraining - 54%) in Project-1, whereas, in Project-2 this increase was higher at 54% (pretraining - 6% and posttraining - 60%). The difference-in-difference results showed that there was statistically significant (P = 0.04) improvement in the knowledge scores of AWWs of two projects scoring <22 marks. The increase in skill scores between two projects was found to be statistically significant (P = 0.000). Conclusion: Increase in skills of AWWs imparted with skill based package was significantly better as compared to the knowledge based package, thus indicating its usefulness over a knowledge-based package. Skill-based oral hygiene package should be imparted to community workers.

Keywords

• anganwadi workers
• health workers
• oral health education
• oral hygiene
• oral hygiene education