Introduction: The Brazilian quilombola population still suffers the consequences of a past of
prejudice, discrimination, injustice, inequality and inequity. The families that still resist in the
remaining quilombo communities live with significant economic, political, social and cultural
inequalities that directly reflect on the compromise of health. Poor oral health conditions, for
example, are consequences of the difficulty in accessing actions to promote, prevent and
recover oral health. And it is from this declared need to reduce health inequalities that Health
Promotion arises, a policy whose movement advocates different fields of action in search of the
quality of life and well-being of the populations. Among them, we highlight the training of the
community and the development of individual and collective skills, which require the
incorporation of educational actions, whether directed towards self-care or popular education.
Objective: To estimate the prevalence of caries and evaluate the impact of an oral health
education program on improving oral hygiene conditions in quilombola schoolchildren.
Methodology: This is a quasi-experimental, prospective, comparative community study, of the
before and after type, with 48 schoolchildren from 5 to 12 years old from a quilombola
community in the state of Tocantins. After calculating the prevalence of caries, an Education
Program for the Promotion of Oral Health was carried out through playful workshops and
collective actions of supervised tooth brushing and topical application of fluoride, whose impact
was measured at the end of the intervention. The instruments used in data collection were the
socioeconomic questionnaires and the forms for calculating the ceo-d / CPO-D and IHO-S
indices. Results: The prevalence of caries in the total sample was 78.72%. The ceo-d at 5 years
was 1.5 and the CPO-D at 12 years was 1.25, with a predominance of components “c” and “C”,
respectively. Of the 37 students who had a history of caries, only 2 (5.4%) had access to the
restorative dental service. Regarding social class, it was possible to observe that all belonged to
classes C2, D or E, and 62.2% were beneficiaries of the Bolsa Família Program. As for access
to fluoridated public water supply, coverage of only 35.1% of this benefit was obtained, so that
most families use water from wells or springs. And finally, on the impact of educational action,
it was observed that quilombola children and adolescents did not have satisfactory oral hygiene
habits (initial IHO-S of 1.84) and that the intervention focused on oral health education had a
positive impact in the condition of oral hygiene, confirmed by the final IHO-S of 1.17.
Conclusion: The results found suggest difficulties in accessing the curative dental service,
reduced public supply of fluoridated water and the need for greater attention to oral health
through frequent education and health promotion actions. Thus, despite being slow and gradual,
the educational process tends to generate satisfactory results in the medium and long term. For
this reason, the union between community, professionals and public health policies is essential
to reduce the prevalence of oral diseases in the quilombola population.
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