Tsige,Yosief (Assistant Professor),Abebe,Fikrtemariam(Lecturer)Bamud,Mohammed2023-12-132023-12-132023http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/123456789/870Background: Children's oral health is greatly influenced by parents' oral health care knowledge, attitude, and practice. In Ethiopia, children's oral health has received minimal attention, and little is known about KAP of parents towards oral health. Objectives: The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge, attitude, and practices of parents toward their children oral health and its influence on the dental caries status of 6-12 years old schoolchildren in public health facilities of Butajira town, Ethiopia, 2023. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from February 27/2023 to March 27/2023 among parents with their 6-12 years old schoolchildren who visited public health facilities of Butajira town. A total of 371 parents with their 6-12 years old child were taken through a simple random sampling technique using table of random numbers. Data was collected through face to face interview of parents using the questionnaire to assess KAP towards their children oral health. Dental examination of the children was done using DMFT and deft index to assess the dental caries status. The data was entered into Epi-data (version 4.6.0.6) and exported to SPSS (version 21.0). Student’s independent T-test was used to test the association between dental caries status and KAP. A P-value of < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results: Majority (69.5%) of parents in the study showed poor KAP. The prevalence of dental caries among 6 to 12 years of age in study population was found to be 85.4% in primary dentition by deft index while it was 78% in permanent teeth by DMFT index. The mean DMFT was 2.19(±1.793) and mean deft was 6.12(±3.399). As KAP increased there was decrease in DMFT and deft score. The association between KAP and DMFT score was statistically significant (P-value = 0.001) while the association between KAP and deft score was not statistically significant (P-value = 0.452). Conclusion: Majority of parents in the study had poor KAP and parental KAP was in inverse relationship with DMFT and deft score of the child. Recommendations: It is evident that the data gathered from this study stresses upon conducting oral health educational programs directed towards parents.en-USOral health; Children; Parents; Dental caries; Knowledge; Attitude; PracticeThesis