Stair poster media as an effort to improve the dental health behavior of elementary school children

The prevalence rate of dental caries has experienced an increasing trend from year to year, so that the condition of dental and oral health problems in Indonesia is still worrying, especially for elementary school children. The high number of dental health problems is caused by many factors, one of which is the low level of dental health maintenance behavior. Promotive and preventive measures are needed to prevent dental and oral health problems, namely by providing dental and oral health education. Poster media is a medium or prop/tool that can be used to convey messages from communicators to the audience. Staircase poster media is a development of general poster media, this media is designed for the sequence/stages of maintaining dental health which are attached to the school steps. Objective: This research is to analyze the effectiveness of stair poster media in improving the dental health behavior of elementary school children. Method: This research used a non-equivalent control group quasi-experimental design. The research sample was 125 people taken using purposive sampling technique. The intervention group was given dental health education using posters, while the control group was given dental health education using filpchart. Data were tested using Wilcoxon test analysis, namely a pre-post design, while to compare the means of the treatment and control groups, the Mann Whitney test was used. Results: The results of the test of differences in knowledge, attitudes and actions of brushing teeth show that the p-value between the intervention group and the control group is 0.000 (p <0.05), meaning that there is a difference between the values of knowledge, attitudes and actions of brushing teeth after dental health education with children's poster media. steps and dental health education with filpchart. Conclusion: dental health education using stair poster media is more effective in increasing the knowledge, attitudes and actions of brushing teeth in elementary school children compared to dental health education using flipcharts Keywords: Stair poster, media, dental health, behavior