Urban tribes and oral health: a sociological experience in a school of dentistry

Abstract

This educational experience shows how dental students deal with sociology application on the practical field, such as urban tribes and its human components. The dental students began to getting closer with practical field by attending the sociological concepts, such as community; cultures; social groups; urban tribes; social processes; social, economic and cultural contrasts; “bucality”. The first contact with urban tribes and their own realities was important to know about urban tribes leaders, such as general and specific information about them. In a second period, a questionnaire was developed by the professor to be applied for discovering the actual socioeconomic and cultural profile of the tribe. In a third moment, it was used the GOHAI Index. The results showed that this way of teaching sociology was more effective and comprehensive to students, due to practical field of sociological processes and “bucality” theory; also, they improved their perceptions about public health basic concepts beyond practical field, in which the urban tribes were questioned. Dental students were able to percept the socioeconomic profile for each urban tribe and determinate the GOHAI Index, that evaluates oral conditions by self-perception of their human components. Considering the sociological and public health impact, this teaching-learning experience gave to dental students a opportunity to vivenciate it on a practical field, contemplating the proposals of the applied sociology subject.