Parents' oral health literacy and its association with their children's oral health: a review

Abstract

Introduction: Oral health literacy (OHL) refers to the cognitive and social skills that allow individuals to obtain, process and understand information about oral health care that allows them to make correct decisions. Objective: To collect updated information on the association between parents' oral health literacy and their children's oral health. Materials and Methods: A bibliographic search was carried out in the Scopus, PubMed, SciELO, LILACS and Google Scholar databases. The descriptors used were “Oral Health Literacy”, “Health Literacy”, “Literacy in Dentistry”, “Oral Health”, “Oral Condition”, “Dental Caries”, “Early Childhood Caries”, “Children”, “Child, Preschool”, “Infant”, “Parents” and “Parenting”. Scientific articles published in English, Portuguese and Spanish between 2013 and 2023 were included. Likewise, crossectional studies, cohort studies, case-control studies, and randomized clinical trials were included. Literature reviews, systematic reviews and meta-analyses were excluded. Results: 147 articles were identified. Then, two trained researchers selected the publications through reading titles, abstracts and full texts. Finally, 14 articles were included. The articles included in this review defined OHL as an important predictor of oral health care, and the REALD-30 was the most used instrument. Furthermore, most of the articles reported the association between low level parents' OHL and their children's poor oral health status. Conclusion: There is an association between the low level of parents’ OHL and the poor oral health status of their children. Furthermore, the socioeconomic level of the family is related to children's oral health care, which leads parents, due to lack of knowledge and lack of resources, to adopt harmful attitudes towards their children.