Health Education in Primary School Textbooks in Iran in School Year 2010-2011

Objectives: health education in schools is one of the most effective ways of pro-moting health in a society. studies have shown the effectiveness of health inter-ventions aimed at improving students’ knowledge, attitude, and behaviors about health issues.the aim of this study was to evaluate health issues in primary school textbooks in iran.materials and methods: in school year 2010-2011, the contents of all primary school textbooks in iran were assessed in accordance to their health-related teach-ings. health lessons of these 27 textbooks in the form of picture and text were re-trieved and analyzed using content analysis method.results: in total, 502 health-related lessons were found. the textbooks of the third grade contained the highest (144) and those of the fourth grade had the low-est (26) number of health lessons. among health-related issues, the largest number (87) of lessons were about personal hygiene, while prevention of high risk beha-viors comprised the least number (8). some important health issues such as nutri-tion, oral health, and prevention of high-risk behaviors were not adequately dis-cussed in the textbooks.conclusion: the potential of primary school textbooks in delivering health mes-sages has been neglected in iran. taking the critical importance of school ages in-to account, incorporating health issues in textbooks should be more strongly em-phasized.