The Concept of Social Health in Persian Research Articles

Since the concept of social health is used by scientific community and policymakers, this research has endeavored to demonstrate the meaning of social health in Iranian studies.

This study is a systematic review of all articles published in the SID database up to February 2019 using the PRISM guideline (PRISM). After an initial screening, articles were analyzed according to methodological features, theoretical bases and scientific field of study.

Both social sciences and health researchers studied social health. Only 17.5% of articles are descriptive studies. 43.57% of the articles did not define social health or there was no consistency between their definition of social health and what was measured. Theoretically, more than 55% was based on Keyes's theory. Conceptually, social health was defied in different ways and social health and social well-being were used interchangeably.

In general, there is no acceptable consensus about the concept of social health in social health studies in Iran. Moreover, due to the method of sampling and the statistical population of the studies, this study cannot present a picture of the social health situation in Iran.