Nationwide Report on the Findings of Integrated School Health Screening Program in Iran

Background: screening of students´ health problems could lead to timely prevention and control of many health disorders.this study aimed to determine the nationwide prevalence of common disorders through school health screening program in iranmethods: this cross-sectional national screening program was conducted in 2007-2008 among first- and third-grade- studentsin primary schools, first- grade-students of middle and high schools of all provinces in iran.results: data were obtained from 3,124,021 (81.9%) students reported from the whole country classified into 33 geographicalzones. of total students studied, 12.48% had weight abnormalities, 4.77% had visual disorders, 3.95 % had head lice,2.24% had behavioral disorders, and 0.6% had hearing disorders. among students studied, 0.4%, 0.7%, 0.4% and0.8% hadendocrine, psychological, neurological and genitourinary disorders, respectively. in addition, 2.1%, 1.9%, 1.8%, 0.8%0.5%,0.3% and 0.3% of students had ear, nose & pharynx disorder, anemia ,skin & hair , cardiac ,abdominal, vertebral and lungproblems, respectively. in elementary schools, 57.6% of first-grade- students with at least one disorder were managed inoutpatient settings and 6% of them were hospitalized for more investigation. among third- grade- students of elementaryschools, these values corresponded to 13.2% and 1.1%, respectively. among first grade students of middle and highschools, this prevalence was 58.5% and 44.6% and 1.2% and 0.3% of students were hospitalized for more investigation.conclusion: this integrated school screening program revealed a considerably high prevalence of health disorders amongschool students. these results might help health policy makers to design future health promoting programs.