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Health policy making for street children: challenges and strategies

  • Fatemeh Abdi , Sara Esmaelzadeh Saeieh , Nasibeh Roozbeh und Mansoureh Yazdkhasti EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 17. August 2017

Abstract

Background

The phenomenon of street children is a bio-psychological and social issue that not only harms children, but also endangers the health of a society. In line with the national programs for the development and promotion of street children’s health in Iran, health policy making and essential strategies for this group of children will be presented in this paper. This paper will discuss the main issues and challenges of street children’s health and, also, health policy and guidelines for this population.

Methods

In this review study, the keywords; street children, health, challenges, policy, and health policy making were searched through PubMed, SID, Iranmedex, World Health Organization (WHO), Emro, the Cochran Library, Medline and Google scholar to collect data. The search resulted in 84 related resources from which 48 cases that were more relevant to this research and covered the issue more comprehensively, were used. All data published during 2002–2015 have been included in this paper.

Results

Key concepts including street children and their health, health policy, strategies to improve the health of street children, health policy approaches for street children, the WHO’s strategies, and social support program for street children must be considered in the health policy making processes for street children, as precise identification of the relevant information makes planning more effective in health policy making for this group of children.

Conclusion

The phenomenon of street children is a growing problem in the world and it has turned into a serious concern in many countries including Iran. The findings of this study can be used for identifying necessary measures in order to use research outcomes more effectively in policy making processes and reforming street children’s health policies in Iran.

Acknowledgments

This project was supported by the Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Alborz University of Medical Sciences. The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests.

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Received: 2017-01-28
Accepted: 2017-01-28
Published Online: 2017-08-17

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