Objective: This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to assess the level of health literacy (HL) in the Iranian population. Data Sources: Persian and English-language articles were identified through Embase, MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, SID, Web of Science, and hand-searching (search dates for articles on health literacy, 1990 to February 2016). Study Selection: Two reviewers independently selected studies that directly measured health literacy levels. Data Extraction: Abstracted article information were categorized into evidence tables by one reviewer; information accuracy was checked by a second reviewer. Two reviewers independently evaluated the study quality by using predefined inclusion criteria, and jointly the overall strength of evidence evaluated by the research team. Results: Twenty-eight relevant good-or fair-quality studies amongst 102 articles were identified, and 44 publications were assessed in full text. The researchers excluded 16 studies: Nine were reports with inadequate results and seven had low quality. Results of meta-analysis showed that better level of HL existed among 66 adults (62.47 to 69.53), 61.62 patients (53.40 to 69.84), 58.88 female (51.68 to 66.07), and 40.98 elderly (17.71 to 64.26). Conclusions: Health Literacy of the Iranian population was inadequate and borderline. Therefore, the need to increase awareness and intervention to reduce poor HL in the Iranian population is crucial.

Context:The importance of research is revealed by the fact that the top seven science producing countries in the world are the same seven countries worldwide in terms of the research facilities.Aim:To explore the barriers to research activities among the students of the Hormozgan Medical University.Settings and Design:A total of 400 students affiliated with the Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences participated in this cross-sectional study.Methods:The sampling method was proportional stratified, and the data collection instrument was a tripartite questionnaire that comprised demographic information, personal barriers, and organizational barriers.Statistical analysis:The data were statistically analyzed by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software (V.16.0, SPSS Inc., Chicago, IL, USA) using descriptive statistics as well as the independent sample t-test, one-way analysis of variance, and Pearson’s correlation coefficient. The level of significance was set at P < 0.05.Results:The most prevalent personal barriers were inadequate knowledge of research methodology (2.91±1.24) and inadequate skill in research conduction (2.89±1.36). In the realm of organizational barriers, limited access to information sources was the most prevalent barrier (2.75±2.27). The results showed that researcher students encounter more of the organizational barriers (56.13±13.90), whereas non-researcher students faced more of the personal barriers (53.80±10.95).Conclusion:Establishing access to high-speed Internet system, raising students’ awareness of research methodology through workshops, encouraging and motivating students for research work, and using online sources can help in removing the barriers to research activities.

The educational intervention driven by the health belief theory showed to be effective on pregnant women and can help to promote preventive behaviors of tooth decay.

Background: This article aims to provide a description of conceptual dimensions and psychometric properties of the tools of oral and dental health literacy. Methods: Two authors in this study conducted electronic searches in the Medline (via PubMed), and Embase databases to find relevant articles from 1990 to present day. Evaluation of the tools was carried out in two parts; general evaluation of the tools using skills introduced by Sørensen et al., and qualitative assessment of psychometric properties using COSMIN checklist. Results: After reviewing 1839 articles on oral and dental health literacy and evaluating 33 full text articles for eligibility, 21 articles entered the study. The sample size varied from 20 to 1405 subjects and the items of each tool ranged from 11 to 99 items. Of the 21 tools examined, 16 tools were evaluated for word recognition. For the studies examined, the evaluation of COSMIN scores was often fair or good. Of the 21 tools examined, 9 tools at least in one dimension were in the category of "poor", 19 tools were in the category of "fair", 20 tools were in the category of "good", and 4 tools were in the category of "excellent" in at least one dimension. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that some aspects of oral and dental health literacy are being ignored in the existing tools. Therefore, the authors of present study emphasize on the necessity to design and develop a comprehensive tool and take into account two characteristics of simplicity and briefness for international use.

BACKGROUND:Mortality and disability rates were reported to be respectively 2-3 and 5-10 times higher in C-sections compared to Vaginal delivery.OBJECTIVES:This study was aimed to explore the factors involved in selecting the birth type among primiparous women.METHODS:The present cross-sectional research was conducted on 220 primiparous women, who visited the health-care centers of Bandar Abbas. They were recruited in their first trimester of pregnancy with a simple randomized clustering method. Data were collected in a researcher-designed questionnaire. Its validity was confirmed by a panel of experts and reliability was tested and approved through the test–retest method. Mean, standard deviation, independent sample t-test, and Chi-squared tests for data analysis were done by SPSS 16. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant.RESULTS:The mean age of the participants was 27.40 ± 6.07 years. The main barriers to the choice of vaginal delivery were the fear of pain and fear of vaginal area tears and ruptures, fear of injury to fetus, and doctor's recommendation. A statistically significant correlation was observed between the age, education, employment, income, awareness, and the reasons for preferring surgical childbirth.CONCLUSIONS:To reduce the rate of unnecessary cesarean sections (C-section), the following recommendations are suggested: Reducing fear of pain in expectant mothers, modifying wrong beliefs about the culture of natural childbirth, increasing awareness of fewer adverse effects of vaginal delivery including the vaginal tears if the mother abides by all midwife(s) instructions during the delivery procedure, providing educational courses for the necessary movements during the delivery, decreasing surgeons’ payment for C-section, and increasing payment for natural childbirth and implementing barriers for optional delivery to reduce the C-section.