Social Determinants of Health and Home Safety for Under-fve Children in a Neighbor’s Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Background: Social determinants of health (SDH) provide a platform in improving health society such as safety. Safety is essential for children because it is directly related to the health and development. The objective of this study was to evaluate the current home safety in the capital city
of Iran for children below fve years by community-based initiative and its association with common SDH variables.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study, considering community- and family-based initiative. According this fve domains checklist which was including physical, kitchen, bath, toys, and f rst-aid kit , 200 family home safety were evaluated. Moreover, the relation between children safety and social determinants of health was assessed. Furthermore, the research team designed an attractive record card for each child that was distributed among families by community volunteers.

Results: The result was extracted into two age groups: less and more than 6 months. We designed an attractive card for each child and distributed among families by volunteers. It showed that children of age above 6 months had higher home safety score. We found a positive association between mother’s education and total safety score.

Conclusions: This study was a part of MAZDAK project which means friendly environment for children in Persian word. It showed that an effective way
for promoting children safety in the community would be community engagement and family cooperation. As the family education can help reduce children injuries, MAZDAK as a model can been run in the other places to check the effects of SDH on home safety for children. This was
an experience of improving community knowledge and behavior about home safety by the parents themselves to improve their children safety environment, and it is going to continue the effcacy of Intervention.

Keywords: Children, community‑based initiation, safety, social determinants of health