Exploration of meanings regarding oral health in a group of pregnant women in Medellín, Colombia: ¿is there oral health literacy?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.rfo.8921Keywords:
Health literacy, Oral health, Pregnant womenAbstract
Introduction: in many cultures, mothers are responsible for taking care of their babies, being the mother frequently the most significant adult, a model to follow, and the principal transmitter of culture, including health knowledge and practices. The objective of this study was to explore a group of pregnant women’s perceptions of their own oral health and that of their children. These women were all from Medellín, Colombia, and they were participating in one of the city’s intervention programs. Methods: An ethno-methodological approach was used; therefore, semi-structured interviews were conducted, recorded, transcribed and analyzed, and the responses were classified according to four criteria: recurrence, divergence, tendencies, and significant meanings. Results: pregnant mothers give significant importance to the mouth due to survival and esthetic reasons. They emphasize teeth over other parts of the mouth and think that oral health is synonymous to healthy teeth. The concept of oral hygiene is represented as cleaning the teeth with toothbrush and toothpaste. The mouth of their future child is not a matter of concern, and they consider oral hygiene important but not in early stages. Conclusions: the interviewed mothers recognize the mouth as an essential survival element. Care of the baby’s mouth gains importance as teeth appear. Dental floss, which is considered necessary as a cleaning element, is not used by pregnant women, not is it frequent tooth brushing. The claim of Oral Health Literacy is to build knowledge in order to promote and preserve health.
Downloads
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Categories
License
Copyright (c) 2011 Revista Facultad de Odontología Universidad de Antioquia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright Notice
Copyright comprises moral and patrimonial rights.
1. Moral rights: are born at the moment of the creation of the work, without the need to register it. They belong to the author in a personal and unrelinquishable manner; also, they are imprescriptible, unalienable and non negotiable. Moral rights are the right to paternity of the work, the right to integrity of the work, the right to maintain the work unedited or to publish it under a pseudonym or anonymously, the right to modify the work, the right to repent and, the right to be mentioned, in accordance with the definitions established in article 40 of Intellectual property bylaws of the Universidad (RECTORAL RESOLUTION 21231 of 2005).
2. Patrimonial rights: they consist of the capacity of financially dispose and benefit from the work trough any mean. Also, the patrimonial rights are relinquishable, attachable, prescriptive, temporary and transmissible, and they are caused with the publication or divulgation of the work. To the effect of publication of articles in the journal Revista de la Facultad de Odontología, it is understood that Universidad de Antioquia is the owner of the patrimonial rights of the contents of the publication.
The content of the publications is the exclusive responsibility of the authors. Neither the printing press, nor the editors, nor the Editorial Board will be responsible for the use of the information contained in the articles.
I, we, the author(s), and through me (us), the Entity for which I, am (are) working, hereby transfer in a total and definitive manner and without any limitation, to the Revista Facultad de Odontología Universidad de Antioquia, the patrimonial rights corresponding to the article presented for physical and digital publication. I also declare that neither this article, nor part of it has been published in another journal.
Open Access Policy
The articles published in our Journal are fully open access, as we consider that providing the public with free access to research contributes to a greater global exchange of knowledge.
Creative Commons License
The Journal offers its content to third parties without any kind of economic compensation or embargo on the articles. Articles are published under the terms of a Creative Commons license, known as Attribution – NonCommercial – Share Alike (BY-NC-SA), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited and that the new productions are licensed under the same conditions.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
