Students Diet and Health

The Effect of Three Elements on Students: Diet, Smoking, and Oral Hygiene Smoking among students in secondary and intermediate schools is prevalent, and this prevalence is expected to have a negative impact on the health of teeth and oral hygiene (Bassiony, 2009). Students are also engaging in poor dietary health (Al-Rethaiaa, Fahmy & Al-Shwaiyat, 2010) which results in the increased risk of obesity and type 2 diabetes (Wilmot & Idris, 2014; Cunningham-Myrie, Theall, Yonger et al., 2015).

As Davis (2012) has shown, addressing dietary issues and getting people to eat a healthier, more organic diet that is low in fats and sugars can help individuals to improve their health and reduce the risk of the development of heart disease and diabetes. The purpose of this study would be to obtain data about students who smoke or use tobacco products, their dietary habits, and their teeth and gum care habits.

This information could then be used to develop a Special Awareness Health Program for schools so as to raise awareness about the importance of health and safety when it comes to diet, smoking, and oral hygiene. As students are already in an academic environment in which learning is the pathway to knowledge, developing a Special Awareness Health Program for schools based on advancing knowledge of health issues in these areas is a natural fit.

The gathering of data for this study would be through the survey method and surveys could be delivered to schools around the KSA in order to obtain a large sample with a wide ranging demographic in terms of locale. The survey would include questions related to students’ smoking, diet, and oral hygiene and responses would be closed-ended and measured using the Likert-scale with a range of 1-5. These responses could then be used to conduct chi-square tests to determine relationships between variables.

This determination would allow health care educators to develop a better understanding of the activities and behaviors that students are engaging in, which would then allow for the appropriate development of a preventive medicine plan via health literacy to be constructed. In this case the health literacy approach would be in the form of a Special Awareness Health Program that could targeted school students in secondary and intermediate schools within the KSA.

Knowing the habits of the students as determined by the analysis of the results of the survey would allow for an effective framework to be implemented in designing the Program. Reaching students in a manner that is agreeable to them and that is meaningful and impactful by being on their level is one of the best ways that a program can produce positive results.

The effectiveness of the Special Awareness Health Program could then be determined by a second and third survey of students who participate in the Program—one survey immediately following the conclusion of the Program to assess what students have learned and whether they plan to implement any of the recommended practices in their own lives; and then another survey of the same students one month later to assess whether the students have actually implemented the recommended best practices to promote health and good oral hygiene.

The outcomes of these surveys would help to show whether the Program is beneficial to school students or whether it needs to be.