Diabetic patients with higher health literacy (HL) may feel more confident in their ability to perform self-care behaviors and may have strong beliefs that diabetes-related behaviors will lead to specific outcomes. Our study aimed to document the relationships between HL, self-efficacy, outcome expectations, and diabetes self-care of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in Iran. We conducted a cross-sectional observational study of 187 patients with T2DM. Participants completed the Functional Communicative and Critical Health Literacy scale, the Summary of Diabetes Self-Care Activities, the Diabetes Management Self-Efficacy Scale, Outcome Expectations Questionnaire, and a demographic questionnaire. Participants who received diabetes education (t = 5.79, p<0.001) and were married (F = 3.04, p<0.050) had better diabetes self-care behavior. There was a significant positive correlation between self-care behaviors and communicative HL (r = 0.455, p<0.010), critical HL (r = 0.297, p<0.010), self-efficacy (r = 0.512, p<0.010) and outcome expectations (r = 0.387, p<0.010). Diabetes education and marital status accounted for 16.9% of the variance in diabetes self-care. Self-efficacy, outcome expectations, communicative, and critical HL explained 28.0%, 1.5%, 3.7%, and 1.4% of the variance, respectively. This study revealed that the potential impact of self-efficacy, outcome expectations, communicative, and critical HL should be considered in the education program for patients with diabetes. We found self-efficacy to be the most important predictor of diabetes self-care. Therefore, the use of self-efficacy theory when designing patient education interventions could enhance diabetes self-care. It is essential that health care providers assess patient's HL levels to tailor health-related information specific to a domain of HL. This would fully inform patients and promote empowerment rather than simple compliance.

Hypertension (HTN) is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Considering the importance of this disease for public health, this study was designed in order to determine the prevalence, awareness, treatment, control, and risk factors of HTN in the Iranian adult population. This cross-sectional study was conducted among 2,107 residents of Isfahan, Iran. Samples were selected through multi-stage random cluster sampling in 2015-2016. The outcome variable was HTN, determined by measuring blood pressure in the right arm via a digital arm blood pressure monitor. Awareness, treatment, and control of HTN were assessed by a validated and reliable researcher-developed questionnaire. Other demographic and clinical variables were assessed via a demographic questionnaire. The overall prevalence of HTN was 17.3% (18.9 and 15.5% in men and women, respectively). The prevalence of HTN increased in both genders with age. The prevalence of awareness of HTN among people with HTN was 69.2%, of whom 92.4 and 59.9% were taking medication for HTN and had controlled HTN, respectively. Logistic regression identified age, body mass index, having diabetes and hyperlipidemia, and a positive family history of HTN as determinants of awareness of HTN. The results showed that HTN was highly prevalent in the community, especially in men and in middle-aged and older adults. Approximately 30.8% of patients were unaware of their disease, and there was less awareness among younger adults. Despite the high frequency of taking medication to treat HTN, it was uncontrolled in more than 40.1% of patients. Health policy-makers should therefore consider appropriate preventive and therapeutic strategies for these high-risk groups.

Background: The application of the nursing research findings is one of the most important indicators of development in the nursing profession, which leads to providing efficient and effective patient care and improving the quality of nursing care. According the result of some studies, transferring the evidence-based findings to the nurses' practice and education in the world has been slow and sometimes unsuccessful. This study aimed to investigate the most important barriers to the application of research findings from the nurses' perspective. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study conducted on a sample of 210 nurses in a teaching hospital in Tehran in 2013. The data were collected using a researcher-made questionnaire consisted of two parts, including items about nurses' demographic characteristics and 30 items to identify the most important barriers to the application of research findings from the studied nurses' perspective. Results:“The lack of sufficient time for reading the studies,” “the lack of sufficient time to implement the new ideas,” “the lack of adequate facilities to implement the ideas,” “nurses' little interest in conducting studies,” and “the lack of authority to change the methods and patterns of care” with, respectively, 85%, 84.6%, 83.8%, 83.4%, and 80.5% agreement with the existence of barriers were the most barriers to application of research findings from the studied nurses' perspective. Conclusion: The lack of time was the most important barrier to the use of research findings from the perspective of studied nurses. Therefore, some effective strategies should be used by hospital managers and health policy makers to overcome this barrier. Some of these strategies can be employing new personnel and hiring skilled and efficient human resources in order to decrease the workload of nurses, organizing the nurses' work shifts, providing right balance between patients and nurses in the wards, etc.

Trends of Breast Cancer Incidence in Iran During 2004-2008: A Bayesian Space-time Model Breast cancer;incidence;spatio-temporal information;bayesian disease mapping;Iran; Background: Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer in women and estimating its relative risks and trends of incidence at the area-level is helpful for health policy makers. However, traditional methods of estimation which do not take spatial heterogeneity into account suffer from drawbacks and their results may be misleading, as the estimated maps of incidence vary dramatically in neighboring areas. Spatial methods have been proposed to overcome drawbacks of traditional methods by including spatial sources of variation in the model to produce smoother maps. Materials and Methods: In this study we analyzed the breast cancer data in Iran during 2004-2008. We used a method proposed to cover spatial and temporal effects simultaneously and their interactions to study trends of breast cancer incidence in Iran. Results: The results agree with previous studies but provide new information about two main issues regarding the trend of breast cancer in provinces of Iran. First, this model discovered provinces with high relative risks of breast cancer during the 5 years of the study. Second, new information was provided with respect to overall trend trends o. East-Azerbaijan, Golestan, North-Khorasan, and Khorasan-Razavi had the highest increases in rates of breast cancer incidence whilst Tehran, Isfahan, and Yazd had the highest incidence rates during 2004-2008. Conclusions: Using spatial methods can provide more accurate and detailed information about the incidence or prevalence of a disease. These models can specify provinces with different health priorities in terms of needs for therapy and drugs or demands for efficient education, screening, and preventive policy into action.