Research about Relationship between the Quality of life, Oral Health and Total Health of adults

The purpose of this research is to increase adults' quality of life by improving oral health. Total 572 people participated in this study in Young-Nam area. Survey research method was used to measure various tools of participants' general index, subjective view of oral health status, oral health knowledge, oral health practice, dietary pattern, OHIP-14, THI, QOL for analyzing the effect on quality of life. The result of the study is summarized as follows; 1. Oral health knowledge has positive effects on oral health practice (0.442), dietary pattern(0.343). Diet has positive effects on OHIP-14(0.187) and OHIP-14 has significant positive effects on THI(0.564). THI also has positive effects on QOL(0.380). But oral health practice index has slight effects on OHIP-14(0.056). 2. Indirect effect indexes on QOL are OHIP-14(0.214), diet(0.040), oral health knowledge(0.019), oral health practice(0.012) listed in order of effect size, and the biggest direct effect on QOL is from THI(0.308). The result of this study shows oral health and total health are important to improve the quality of life. And the knowledge about oral health dietary pattern should be important to improve oral health. But, even with high level of oral health knowledge, the oral health practice is at low level. Health education developing program should be needed. It is required to present basic data which represent adults with national view by extracting groups using sample probability methods as of next task of this study.