Health programmes are developed to prevent disease or manage the treatment process. They should be universal enough to target the largest possible group while taking into account the individual predispositions of the recipients. Important factors influencing the scope and design of health programs are also the financial capacity and availability of personnel to implement them. Thus, in addition to the experience of planners, the use of advanced decision support tools is necessary. Hybrid simulation modelling, which refers to the combination of two or more simulation approaches, is widely used to help manage various aspects of health care, including health programmes. The article is a part of a larger study in the area of using simulation modelling to support the planning of dental caries prevention programmes in primary schools in Poland. The paper focusses on one component, which are educational talks. Our goal is to provide a framework for developing simulation models to determine the potential impact of educational talks on children's oral health attitudes towards oral hygiene. The results of the experiments showed that oral health education may results in positive attitudes at the end of primary education in children.

The discrete event simulation method is commonly used to support decision-making in healthcare management. It is also used in planning the prevention of tooth decay in schools. Its usefulness largely depends on the concept of the model, which reproduces a fragment of reality along with the assumptions made. The aim of this paper is to discuss particular important modeling issues, which we faced, while developing a discrete event simulation model to support decision making in caries prevention planning in a sample primary school in one of the cities in the South-West Poland. We present reflections on the assumptions for the discrete event simulation model. The first stage of the simulation study confirms the relevance of the analysis of these assumptions and that their choice was appropriate. Therefore, the developed model may be the basis for further research and, as a result, be a tool to support management in planning the prevention of tooth decay in primary schools in Poland.

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