Research Priorities in Health Field in Ardabil Province: An Experience

Promoting health has always been considered as one of the basic priorities in international, national, regional and local policies. Moreover, retention and promotion of individual health requires a good knowledge of essentials and priorities of the future. Consequently, determining heslth priorities and devising public health programs and policies is just one of the crucial issues to be considered and implemented by the organizations involved. So a fundamental revising of the health care services based on health promotion indices seems to be necessary in order to increase the influence of health interference programs, extend the quality of health care services and improve activities concerning public health.

This project started in 2001 and was defined by precise planning of its organization chart. Its two basic concerns included the current status of health and determining its priorities. The first point, that is the current status of health was performed through investigating the previous researches as well as qualitative and field studies. In this phase of research 1000 urban and 1000 rural families were interviewed about different aspects of health including population characteristics, nutrition, risk factors, treatment habits and so forth. To measure the parameters such as hemoglobin, hematocrite, sugar and lipids, blood samples were taken from members of 200 families who were above 15. Weight, height and blood pressure of all the subjects who were above 15 years of age and weight, height and Mid Arm Circumference (MAC) of the children aged below 6 were measured. The data were collected and scored based on scientific indices and finally the research priorities in the field of health were determined. It should be noted that many people and organizations participated in this research.

The findings indicated that mortality of children under 5 years of age, casualties, accidents, etc. were among 34 most essential health priorities.

Regarding the great experience of determining health priorities which was conducted through need assessment and wide cooperation of the public and organizations, it seems important to conduct such researches once in some years and transfer their findings to other sectors in order to prevent wastage of costs, time and labor. This will also lead the researches towards the real needs and necessary interference in order to promote public health.