The perceptions of first nation participants in a community oral health initiative

The Children’s Oral Health Initiative (COHI) is a federally funded community-based preventive dental program for children and their caregivers living in geographically isolated Canadian Aboriginal communities. The goal of the program is to improve access to preventive dental services for children of 0–7 years of age. It utilises community health workers in collaboration with dental therapists to promote and deliver the program. Almost half of the province of Manitoba’s (n=27) First Nations communities have implemented COHI since 2005. The objective of this investigation was to explore the opinions of COHI from the perspective of community members whose children had participated in the program. Purposeful selection identified caregivers of enrolled children for a semi-structured interview. The targeted caregivers had children who met at least one of the following criteria: (1) 0–2 years old; (2) 5–7 years old; (3) had two or more children either currently or formerly enrolled in COHI. Six open-ended questions guided the interview process. Content analysis was used to code transcripts and identify themes. One hundred and forty-one interviews were completed in 13 communities. Participants defined good oral health as the absence of dental cavities, which reflects a Western biomedical model of disease. The local, community-based nature of COHI was viewed as essential to its success in increasing access to preventive dental services and improving children and caregivers’ oral health knowledge and behaviours. In conclusion, a local, community-based oral health prevention programme is perceived as having a beneficial effect on children and caregivers’ oral health knowledge and behaviours. However, oral health preventive messages need to be further integrated into traditional Aboriginal holistic models of wellness.