Background: Health maintenance and promotion are the fundamental prerequisites to community development. The best time for establishing healthy lifestyle habits is during adolescence. Objectives: Due to importance of health promotion behaviors in adolescents, this study was conducted to investigate healthpromoting behaviors and its associated factors among high school students in Rasht, Iran. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 424 students during the first semester of the year 2012. We employed the multistage sampling design to recruit from private and public high schools in Rasht, Iran. The data collection instrument was a self-report questionnaire consisting of two parts. The first part of instrument was consisted of demographic questionnaire and the second part was adolescent health promotion scale (AHPS) questionnaire. AHPS questionnaire was consisted of six dimensions (nutrition, social support, health responsibility, life appreciation, physical activity, and stress management) to measure health promoting lifestyles. Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS 16 software employing ANOVA (analysis of variance) test, t-test, Mann-Whitney, and the Kruskal-Wallis. Results: The score of total Adolescent Health Promotion Scale were 3.58 ± 0.52 (possible range was 1-5). The highest score was in life appreciation dimension (3.99 ± 0.068) and the lowest score was in health responsibility dimension. Moreover, Significant associations were found between the adolescent health promotion Scale with age (P < 0.001), gender (P < 0.003), school grade (P < 0.011), father's educational level (P < 0.045), mother's educational level (P < 0.021), and mother's occupation (P < 0.008). Conclusions: Female and older students are at higher risk of developing unhealthy lifestyle. Consequently, healthcare providers, health instructors, schoolteachers, and families must pay more attention to these students. Moreover, as most of lifelong healthy and unhealthy lifestyle habits are established during adolescence, developing effective health promotion and disease prevention strategies for adolescents seems crucial.

Introduction: Health promoting lifestyle is one of the determinants of health. University years are important phase of life when one can develop health promoting lifestyle. Given the high cost of healthcare there is need of shift from a treatment based approach to a preventive

Introduction: Fever is one of the most concerning issues in public health, which occurs fairly frequently and is a precursor for the occurrence of seizure in childhood between ages of 6 months to 6 year children. Therefore, the current study aims to determine the effect of education based on Health Belief Model (HBM) in mothers about preventive behaviors regarding febrile convulsion in children. Methods:This study was conducted as a randomized clinical trial in which 200 mothers (were divided to intervention (case) and control groups randomly) with children 6 months to 3 years referring to health centers in Rezvanshahr participated. The data collection instruments is a questionnaire developed based on HBM. This survey included questions on knowledge, aspects of health belief model, and performance. After needs analysis that was done in the pretest, the educational program was designed and implemented in the experimental condition based on the aspects of the model. Results: There was no significant difference between the two groups in demographic variables (P>0.05). The average knowledge score, aspects of the model, and performance increased significantly in the case group (P<0.05). Conclusion:The results of this study indicated that the design and implementation of an educational program based on HBM and based on the predictive beliefs and culture and education of the mothers was effective in preventing febrile convulsion.

Background: Elderly people are more susceptible to common chronic diseases based on their age-related physiological changes and also use drugs more commonly, than younger people. Objectives: The aim of the present study was to determine the pattern of drug use and related factors in elderly people who referred to the retirement centers covered by the national retirement fund in Rasht. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 381 consecutive randomly selected elderly people in Rasht during 2017. Data was collected using a questionnaire that included demographic characteristics, common chronic diseases, pattern of drug use, and medication adherence by face-to-face interviewing at the centers covered by the retirement fund. Data analysis was carried out using descriptive statistics and Chi-square tests. Results: Of 381 people, 88.5% took drugs. The average number of drugs used and the self-medication frequency were 3.95 per day, and 35.7%, respectively. The most common causes of self-medication included previous use of the same drug and symptom recovery. The most commonly used drug group among the research groups included lipid-lowering agents (48.8%). Atorvastatin, Aspirin, and Losartan were the most commonly used drugs in the elderly that most of subjects (53.4%) had medium medication adherence. Conclusions: Since the elderly suffer from multiple diseases simultaneously, they often use several drugs. Therefore, selfmedication and also medication adherence are the most important issues in this period. Educational interventions on the proper pattern of drug use among older people seem to be necessary.