Payavard Salamat

The Status of Public Libraries Affiliated with the Cultural and Art Organization of Tehran Municipality in Providing Health Information to the Elderly

Fatemeh Khazaee

Background and Aim: One of the most important needs of the elderly is information. Public libraries are among the centers that can play an effective role in providing information services year after year. The purpose of this study was to investigate the situation of public libraries affiliated with the Cultural and Artistic Organization of Tehran Municipality in the Health Information Report for 2020 in Tehran province.
Materials and Methods: The present study was descriptive-analytical in nature and with applied results. In this study, due to the comprehensiveness of the work, sampling was not done and in other words, the research sample was with the research community. The research community of Tehran Province Public Librarians was affiliated with the Cultural and Artistic Organization of Tehran Municipality (87 people). The validity of this questionnaire was confirmed based on the opinions of seven experts in the field of library and medical information. And its reliability was calculated 0.9 through Cronbach’s alpha. The research tool was a researcher-made questionnaire. Data were analyzed by SPSS software using descriptive statistics and one-sample t-test.
Results: The situation of resources, tools and technology as well as the services of public libraries affiliated to the Cultural and Artistic Organization of Tehran Municipality in providing health information to the elderly are unfavorable and below average (P>0.05). Findings show that services can be provided Health services in public libraries affiliated to the Cultural and Artistic Organization of Tehran Municipality for the elderly, respectively, insufficient budget and lack of facilities and equipment for the elderly and lack of up-to-date, lack or reporting of information sources.
Conclusion: According to the results, the situation of public libraries affiliated to the Cultural and Artistic Organization of Tehran Municipality in providing health information to the elderly in Tehran province was unfavorable. Due to demographic changes in the coming years, it is necessary for the public libraries of their country to prepare to provide appropriate services to the previous years.

A Bibliometric and Altmetrics Analysis of Highly Cited Articles in the Field of Infectious Diseases

Najibeh Shenavar

Background and Aim: Infectious Diseases are among the diseases involved in public health and a high percentage of causes of death worldwide are attributed to these diseases. The purpose of this study was to investigate the status of highly cited articles in the field of infectious diseases based on bibliometrics and Altmetrics indicators.
Materials and Methods: This descriptive-analytical research was applied research that has been done using bibliometrics and Altmetrics methods. The research population included 687 highly cited articles indexed on the Web of Science (WOS) database between 2010-2020. Web of Science database and Bookmarklet tool was used for data collection and VOSviewer, Excel, and SPSS software were used for data analysis.
Results: The production process of highly cited articles have had an upward trend. The highest publication rate was in 2020 and the lowest in 2010. The United States published the largest number of articles with 49%, and Lisa Maragakis and Deborah Yokoe were among the most prolific writers. The Lancet Infectious Diseases Magazine and the Center Disease Control Prevention Institute have contributed the most to the publication of articles citing infectious diseases. Vocabulary: COVID 19, epidemiology, disease, mortality, and infection were the most widely used terms in the field of infectious diseases. Mendeley and Twitter were also among the most important social media sites that cited highly cited articles.
Conclusion: The results showed that there is a significant relationship between Altmetrics indices and the number of citations. Also, by identifying the characteristics of highly cited articles in the field of infectious diseases, an attempt has been made to provide a clear view of the top authors, countries, institutions, and journals, and of course, researchers can use the hot and emerging topics identified in this research in future research.

Evaluation of the Implementation of “Health Promoting Schools” Program in Education Organization District 1 of Ahvaz: A Qualitative Study

Mansour Zahiri

Background and Aim: The growing health care needs of students actuated world Health Organization to develop School-based health projects in the last decades. The most important plan that has received worldwide attention and in Iran for nearly one decade is Health Promoting School (HPS) program which being implemented with collaboration of Ministries of Health and Education. Present qualitative study was conducted to evaluate this program implementation in Ahvaz education organization (District 1).
Materials and Methods: In this qualitative study data was collected by semi-structured interview. The study population consisted of school health experts affiliated with Ahvaz West Health Center and health deputy, health experts affiliated with education organization (District 1 and school headmasters and expert staffs in HPS (22 persons). The sampling was purposeful and the interviews continued until saturation of data. Content analysis was used for analysis of the data.
Results: Data analysis showed that most components of the HPS program in schools belong to education organization were not implemented properly. The major barriers were categorized into 5 and 47 main and subsidiary themes respectively. Poor stewardship and authority, policymaking and legislation, weaknesses in motivation, attitude and awareness of managers and experts, inadequacy in resources and infrastructure, ineptitude in program implementation and finally inappropriate evaluation system was specified as the main themes. According to results, some of the most important reasons for failure in HPS program consisted of, lack of functions definiteness between health deputy in ministry of health and education organization, job dissatisfaction in school health experts, not being a priority behalf education organization, insufficient delegation of authorized budget, lack of interpectoral cooperation between trustee organizations and indifference about program evaluation.
Conclusion: The most important challenge in the HPS program is the implementation barriers that make the establishment and implementation of this program almost ineffective. The serious and committed interaction between the ministry of Health and Education and between their respective provincial and county districts can provide the foundation for the implementation of this valuable program. A review of the organizational structure and executive framework of the program is also necessary.

Modeling and Analyzing the Dimensions of Tourism with an Entrepreneurial Approach in Pandemic Crises (Covid 19): Mixed Method

Moslem Soleymanpor

Background and Aim: With the global expansion of Covid 19, the tourism industry has faced one of its biggest operational, commercial and financial crises, and most of the source-destination interactions have been suspended and have changed the view of the host community and their interactions with tourists. The purpose of this study is to provide a model for tourism development during the Covid 19 crisis and beyond.
Materials and Methods: This study was conducted using a combined (qualitative-quantitative) research approach. First, in a qualitative method with the data foundation approach, interviews with academic experts and managers and activists of the tourism industry in East and West Azerbaijan Provinces, and using purposeful and theoretical sampling, 18 people were selected to the point of information saturation. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were used to collect data. Data extracted from interviews were encoded by open, axial and selective coding. Then, to fit and test the obtained model in the second step (quantitative part), the method of structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analysis were used.
Results: The final model consists of a total of 66 concepts extracted from the interviews, in the form of 14 categories and contextual categories, causal conditions, interventional conditions, strategies and finally, consequences and results of tourism entrepreneurship in pandemic crises and all of them affect this model. Based on the results of combined reliability, extracted variance, model determination coefficient and goodness-of-fit index, the drawn model in the field of path analysis has good experimental-theoretical assumptions and has a very good fit. Based on the obtained path coefficients, it can be concluded that the intervention conditions had the most and the causal conditions had the least impact on the strategic model of the tourism industry in pandemic crises.
Conclusion: Results indicate that strategies such as virtual tourism development, crisis management in the tourism industry, the development of domestic tourism by emphasizing the observance of health protocols and focusing on the development of tourism infrastructure, leads to the realization of consequences such as the maintenance and prosperity of tourism businesses, strengthening the tourism industry and creating a new tourism market for the post-corona era.

Cytotoxic T-Cell Markers and Cytokines in Human Papillomavirus 16

Sakineh Abbasi

Background and Aim: Cervical cancer is the fourth main cause of mortality among women, and annually about half a million new cases are detected in developed countries. Based on oncological studies, human papillomavirus (HPV) is classified into two categories: high-risk type and low-risk type, and most cases are related to the high-risk type of human papillomavirus. HPV 16 and 18 are among the more dangerous ones in this type of cancer. Human papillomavirus is a small group of uncoated viruses with double-stranded DNA that belong to the papillomaviridae family.
Materials and Methods: In this review study, more than 200 articles related to human papillomavirus and immune system function against this virus were reviewed from 2015 to 2020 and among them, 34 articles related to markers and cytokines in cervical cancer were chosen from Google Scholar, Scopus, and PubMed.
Results: One of In-vitro methods in markers detection , is using vectors to infect dendritic cells to present antigen, increase the expression of markers and mature T cell, which leads to the identification of a variety of markers and cytoklines such as PD, PDL, CD, MHC, FASL, IFN, IL, TLR associated with cervical cancer.
Conclusion: Cervical cancer prevention can reduce the economic as well as the social burden of having the disease in the community. Important cytokines expressed when exposed to HPV include IL-6 and IL-8. Several agonist epitopes with enhanced binding power to the human leukocyte antigen (HLA-A2) A2 class I antigen have been described to enhance cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses and to be used in the development of effective HPV vaccines; this is because it has already been shown that different epitopes of 16 HPVs, such as E6 and E7, are able to elicit human cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) responses by binding to HLA-A2.

Design and Validation of an Assessment Tool to Determine the Level of Self-Care of Patients Affected by Diabetes Type II

Sharareh Rostam Niakan Kalhori

Background and Aim: Diabetes Type II is a chronic metabolic disorder rising its prevalence worldwide. Self-care is the most important management strategy to control the disorder and its adverse effects. The aim of this study was to design and validate an assessment tool to determine the level of self-care of patients affected by Diabetes type II.
Materials and Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study. To conduct this study, based on reviewing the texts and reviewing the existing questionnaires, the proposed items were prepared and by eliminating and integrating similar items into a questionnaire in 4 areas related to diet, blood sugar monitoring, Physical activity, drug use was designed with 15 questions. Thirty patients with type 2 diabetes referred to the endocrinology clinic completed a questionnaire. The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha and the validity of the questionnaire was assessed by content validity (CVR). Data were analyzed using SPSS software.
Results: The results showed that the mean and standard deviation of the age of the studied units was 52.4±12.51 years, of which 50% were female and the other 50% were male. 56% of them had type 2 diabetes for less than 5 years. Also, people with higher education had relatively better metabolic control in diabetes management and patients ‘answer to question 6 had the highest mean, which shows patients’ attention to blood sugar control. To determine the reliability of the questionnaire, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for all questions was 0.773, with the omission of question 9, it was increased to 0.796. Only two validity questions were 0.66 and 0.16 which were excluded from the test. Pearson correlation coefficient was calculated for each question.
Conclusion: The results of this study showed that the questionnaire has the necessary validity and reliability. With this tool, appropriate advice can be provided to patients with type 2 diabetes in the field of self-care, including diet, medication, physical activity and blood sugar control to prevent the progression of the disease and its complications.

Design and Psychometrics of Quality of Life Assessment Tools for Patients with Hypertension

Afzal Shamsi

Background and Aim: Hypertension is the strongest independent and modifiable factor for heart failure, ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular accident and chronic kidney disease worldwide, which affects the quality of life of patients. In order to accurately assess the quality of life of patients, it is necessary to design a special questionnaire consisting of different dimensions in order to provide a good view of the quality of life of these patients. The purpose of this study is “Design and psychometrics of quality of life tools for patients with hypertension.”
Materials and Methods: The present study is a methodological research that was conducted in qualitative and quantitative parts. Participants in this study were 260 patients with hypertension referring to medical centers affiliated to Tehran University of Medical Sciences (TUMS). The items were designed based on the qualitative part of the study and review of texts. The validation characteristics of the questionnaire were performed using face validity, content (qualitatively and quantitatively using two indicators CVR and CVI) and structure (with exploratory factor analysis approach). The reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by internal consistency and stability methods.
Results: In the qualitative section, 55 items were extracted, which after calculating the item impact score index with values higher than 1.5, content validity ratio greater than 0.56 and content validity index higher than 0.57, 45 items were selected. Using heuristic factor analysis, 42 items and three factors: 1) disease dominance including two subscales of physical (7 items) and psychosocial (20 items), 2) coping with the disease (12 items) and 3) compliance with Drug therapy (3 items) was found to jointly account for 53.30% of the observed variance. Cronbach’s alpha reported the internal reliability of the questionnaire as excellent, at 91%.
Conclusion: The designed questionnaire has appropriate and approved psychometric properties (validity and reliability) to measure the quality of life of patients with hypertension. Therefore, this tool is recommended for measuring the variables in Iranian patients with hypertension.

Telemedicine System: A Mandatory Requirement in Today’s World

Mozhgan Tanhapour

Background and Aim: Telemedicine provides medical services remotely. There are some problems with implementing telemedicine projects. The purpose of this study was to investigate the most common telemedicine services in Iran and other developed countries as well as examine the legal, financial and privacy challenges of telemedicine services in these countries, especially in the era of the COVID-19 epidemic.
Material and Methods: In this study, the status of telemedicine in Iran and developed countries was reviewed. Thus, related papers and grey literature were retrieved from PubMed, Scopus, SID and Magiran scientific databases. Also, related websites including the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of the Islamic Republic of Iran were examined. According to the study’s purposes, the relevant resources were selected and summarized by researchers.
Results: Radiology, psychiatry and cardiology are the most widely used telemedicine services for interaction with patients as well as emergency, pathology and radiology for healthcare professional communication. Teleconsulting is the most widely used telemedicine service in Iran. There are some laws such as article 74 from section 14 in the Iran development plan to support the provision of e-health and telemedicine services. Also, there are some limited laws for patients’ privacy. In Europe, there is a set of guidelines for health websites, mobile health and cross-border exchange of health information, etc. although there are no uniform laws about telemedicine. HIPAA in the United States and GDPR in Europe are some privacy laws in developed countries. There are some restrictions on telemedicine reimbursement in the United States including the fee-for-service payment model; however, the costs of telemedicine in the United States are usually less than face-to-face treatment.
Conclusion: In the present era using telemedicine services become a requirement due to the outbreaks of epidemics such as COVID-19. Concerning the experience of developed countries, telemedicine services development in Iran requires some considerations in terms of legal, financial and privacy aspects including the creation of explicit laws on patients and healthcare provider’s rights, providing the telemedicine guidelines in different clinical fields such as structured formats for teleconsultation as well as the explicit laws for preserving the patient’s privacy.