Social health needs in high school female students

Abstract

Introduction: In countries like Iran in that most of the population consists of young people, designing and implementing comprehensive health programs targeted at young people must become a priority in national programs. More than half of high school students in Isfahan are female. Because of their more vulnerability, and their roles in health of future generations, it is essential for health community to be aware of what they are experiencing on their health needs. Based on this awareness, designing and implementing accurate programs should be done in order to improve their health. This study was carried out with the aim of finding health needs of female high school students.

Methods: A phenomenological qualitative approach was used and participants were chosen from the female high school students of five districts of Ministry of Education in Esfahan. Purposeful sampling was adopted in the study and the sample size composed of a total of 15 participants. Deep interviews were used through Streubert method.

Results: From the findings of the interviews, 77 codes expressing participants' experiences were emerged. At the end, these codes were categorized in 3 themes as the following: 1) school and school performance, 2) social security and 3) interactions with opposite sex.

Conclusion: Social interactions are crucial during adolescence and have great impact on students' health. In fact, female adolescents express and define their health according to their interactions and communications with the environment.