Community Health Assessment to Identify Problems and Develop Operational Plans to Promote Health in the Soufian District

Background and Aim: The promotion of the health of the members of a society is based on the assessment of the situation of that society. This study was conducted in the Soufian district of Shabestar city with the aim of identifying and prioritizing its problems and needs with the direct participation of the people. Materials and Methods: This was a cross-sectional study conducted in the Sufian District of Shabestar city in 2019, the methodology used being based the 8-phases model of North Carolina. The community health assessment was performed in 8 phases. The first seven phases included identifying and prioritizing the problems of the District, and the eighth was developing operational plans to solve its priority problems. Results: A total of 23 different problems were identified. Prioritizing the problems according to the Hanlon method showed the ten main and priority problems to be, in a descending order, as follows: marriage of girls at an early age (21.01), excessive use of chemical fertilizers in farmlands (20.89), lack of social security clinics (20.51), unemployment (20.38), severe air pollution caused by incineration of industrial waste (20.01), accumulation of municipal waste in the city (19.89), high hardness of city water (19.76), lack of property deeds (19.63), lack of a specific unit in the industrial town to separate waste (19.38), and lack of a gas supply to Mehr Housing and lack of asphalted roads (19.28). Marriage of girls at an early age was identified as the main problem and with the first priority, and a general preliminary study was done on it; it was found that in about 43% of all marriages registered between 2014 and the first half of 2021 the ages of girls were under 18 years. Factors causing and increasing marriage of girls at an early age were identified to be as follows: low awareness of girls' families and girls themselves of the consequences of early marriage, social acceptance of early marriage in the area and low parental literacy. Conclusion: In this study a wide range of social, cultural, economic and health problems were identified in the population studied. Marriage of girls at an early age is an important social problem with serious undesirable consequences. In an attempt to solve this problem it is essential to consider, in addition to legal and legislative strategies and actions, appropriate scientific, social, cultural and economic strategies and applied research.