Sociocultural Context

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How is sociocultural context affecting children’s oral health? Defined by World Health Organization (WHO), Health is a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being, not simply the absence of disease. There are 3 dimensions of well-being, Physical, Mental and Social well-being. It is found that there are multiple indicators in assessing health and treatment outcomes. The determination of health-related quality of life of an individual is made against a cultural background that includes set of values, standards, customs, and traditions associated with a particular society. Culture is defined as learned behavior, which has been socially acquired; it is the shared and organized body of customs, skills, ideas and values, transmitted…show more content…
Vgotsky, he believed that an individual’s thoughts and behaviors can be traced to interactions with other people within their society. In one of Vgotsky’s theory that children’s learning is influenced by their cultures and societies. The family in which is the basic unit of society plays an important role in cultivating habits, attitudes and behavior of its members, especially the children. Family culture is somewhat a reflection of the society where the family belongs. The parent’s influence and presence is very important and very crucial on behavior shaping particularly in children’s oral health habits in their formative years. In particular, in a study if Saied-Moallemi et.al., in 2008, Maternal oral health habits undoubtedly influence her children’s oral self-care, emphasizing the mother’s role in the oral health of their offspring. Mother and child health has also a wide range of customs and beliefs. For an example, like in Gwalior region, India does not give the child milk in the first three days after birth due to the misconception that colostrum is harmful, and give water instead. Delay in start of weaning bottle-feeding is also a part of culture where it can lead to detrimental effects on children’s teeth and cause severe early childhood…show more content…
Again, family plays a vital role in shaping food runs into the families generation to generation. Family who has a sweet tooth might after the eating also of their children and might develop some degenerative disease like diabetes in an early age. While in western diet that consists of refined food, which can highly risk for having caries, obesity and as well of malocclusion due to inadequate stimulation of jaw and its musculature. Oral Hygiene practices in different culture may also have an impact on the children’s oral health particularly in the indigenous people like in a study conducted by Pirona et al in 2008, the indigenous group from Zulia State, Venezuela found that the community oral health is strongly associated with spiritual and environmental elements, they believed that the mouth represents the meeting point of the two elements. And some of the practices of cultures may have a negative or positive effect on the oral and general health of

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