Characteristics of oral health literacy in Senegal: A cross-sectional study among women in the Department of Pikine

Serigne Ndame Dieng; Aïda Kanouté; Pierre Lombrail; Massamba Diouf; Sylvie Azogui-Levy

doi:10.4081/jphia.2022.2114

Authors

Serigne Ndame Dieng
serignedame.dieng@ucad.edu.sn
Department of Odontology, Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, Senegal. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3170-0654
Aïda Kanouté Department of Odontology, Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, Senegal.
Pierre Lombrail Health Education and Promotion Laboratory, Sorbonne University of Paris Cité, Bobigny, France. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5436-2475
Massamba Diouf Department of Odontology, Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, Senegal.
Sylvie Azogui-Levy Health Education and Promotion Laboratory, UFR of Odontology, Paris 7 University, Paris, France.

Senegal having a significant prevalence of socially differentiated oral diseases, oral health literacy (OHL), an individual and social resource, should be considered alongside a remedial response. This work aimed to analyze women’s OHL characteristics. A cross-sectional study on 315 women in Pikine County was carried out, using the Oral Health Literacy-Adult Questionnaire (OHL-AQ) for the OHL data collection and a questionnaire for the women’s socioeconomic characteristics data. These women had an OHL average score of 6.5±3.1 and a median of 6. Among them, 56.5% had a seemingly low OHL level, a little over 68.9% had a score above the median as regards the “listening, communication and understanding” aspect, 58.4% to “decision making”, 55.2% to “understanding numbers” and 33% to “reading and understanding”. According to a multivariate analysis, secondary and higher educated women (p<0.001) with an active social network (p<0.023), in a wealthy household (p<0.0001) and of nuclear household type (p<0.036) had a higher OHL level. Women in Pikine have low OHL and are from working- class households. Therefore, oral health policies must take into account the women’s social network contribution to the OHL improvement.

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Rights

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Dieng, S. N., Kanouté, A., Lombrail, P., Diouf, M., & Azogui-Levy, S. (2022). Characteristics of oral health literacy in Senegal: A cross-sectional study among women in the Department of Pikine. Journal of Public Health in Africa, 13(2). https://doi.org/10.4081/jphia.2022.2114