Community Oral Health Promotion: Evaluation of an Educational Intervention for the Prevention of Oral Cancer and Premalignant Lesions

Introduction: oral cancer is one of the top ten locations of cancer incidence in the world and in Cuba. Objective: develop a community intervention for the promotion and prevention of premalignant lesions and oral cancer in patients aged 19-59 years. Method: community intervention with experimental design, with pre-test, post-test and control group, in clinics 1, 3 and 24 belonging to the three polyclinics of the Isle of Youth in the period 2017-2019. The sample was 1300 patients distributed in the three offices, being probabilistic, simple random. An experiment group and a control group were determined for each office, made up of the same number of patients. Theoretical, empirical and mathematical-statistical methods were used and the variables: age groups, sex, risk factors, oral hygiene and level of knowledge about premalignant lesions and oral cancer. Results: the age group of 35-59 years predominated for 71,7 % and the female sex for 63,7 % in the studied sample. Before the intervention, a bad level of knowledge predominated, representing 43,7 % of the experimental group, managing to raise it too good after the intervention by 67,5 %, reducing the risk factors initially detected. Conclusions: the use of new information and communication technologies in promotion and prevention activities contributed to raising the level of knowledge about premalignant lesions and oral cancer, the main risk factors and oral self-examination, and to transforming the ways of performance