International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | February 2022 | Vol 9 | Issue 2 Page 631 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Muthiah N et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2022 Feb;9(2):631-636 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article A training model for the community healthcare volunteers’ knowledge on periodontal disease and birth outcome Nisa Muthiah 1 *, Melissa Adiatman 2 , Armasastra Bahar 2 INTRODUCTION Health human resources is defined by the World Health Organisation as people engaged in actions whose primary intent is to enhance health. Health education is consciously constructed opportunities for learning that involve some form of communication designed to improve health literacy, including improving knowledge and developing life skills conducive to individual and community health. 1 Ministry of Health Republic of Indonesia stipulates that the public is given an opportunity to participate individually and in an organized manner in implementing health efforts. The community dental health efforts program is an effort to support the Republic of Indonesia’s Medium-Term Health Sector Development Plan 2020–2024 to reduce infant mortality and place empower the community as subjects. 2 According to the 2018 DKI Jakarta Provincial Sub-District Health Office's profile data, there were 183 cases of low-birth-weight (LBW) babies in the East Jakarta area. Most trained active community healthcare volunteers in the East Jakarta area have never received special knowledge on periodontal health and the risks ABSTRACT Background: Indonesian community healthcare volunteers and pregnant women have not received sufficient special training; they lack knowledge about periodontal disease risks during pregnancy and childbirth. The purpose of this research was to increase community healthcare volunteers' knowledge about periodontal disease, which is a risk during pregnancy and childbirth. Methods: The 9 step theory based training model included stages from problem identification to evaluation that would be incorporated into dental and oral health education programs at public health centers. A quantitative pre- experiment with one subject group compared pre-test and post-test designs. Dentists provided 9-step training to 53 community healthcare volunteers at a health center, East Jakarta. Fifty pregnant women were then given similar training by the community healthcare volunteers. Results: The result was an increase in knowledge among community healthcare volunteers and pregnant women (α=0.05; p=0.000 with the Wilcoxon test). No significant difference was observed on educational aids between flipchart and puzzle cards in increasing knowledge among community healthcare volunteers (p=0.969 with an independent t-test) and pregnant women (p=0.359 with the Mann-Whitney test). Conclusions: The 9-step theory–based training model was found to be effective in increasing knowledge among community healthcare volunteers. Flipchart and puzzle cards were equally effective in increasing knowledge among community healthcare volunteers and pregnant women. Keywords: 9 step theory, Childbirth, Community healthcare volunteers, Periodontal disease, Training model 1 Department of Community Dentistry, Faculty of Dentistry, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia 2 Department of Preventive and Public Health Dentistry, Universitas Indonesia, Indonesia Received: 03 December 2021 Accepted: 15 January 2022 *Correspondence: Dr. Nisa Muthiah, E-mail: nisa.muthiah@alumni.ui.ac.id Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20220219