Population aging management from the perspective of the health field of Iran and other countries: A scoping review

Abstract

Population aging is one of the challenging phenomena where due to health changes and the importance of different levels of prevention, the country’s health system is most responsible for it. Therefore, it is responsible for providing responsible service and dealing with challenges and obstacles to successfully face the aging phenomenon. In this regard, the study was conducted aiming to identify inefficiencies and solutions to face the phenomenon of population aging from the perspective of the health field in Iran and other countries. The study is a domain review that was conducted by searching for specialized words in Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Cochrane, Mbase, and ProQuest databases and the Persian databases of the National Journals Information Bank, the Islamic Jihad Scientific Database, Irandoc, and the World of Islam Citation Database. The findings were analyzed based on 57 articles. In order to validate the findings, the opinions of five experts in the fields of health care management, social medicine, psychology, and health policy were used in the classification and completion of data. According to the findings, the challenges of the health system in facing the aging phenomenon were “inefficiencies of the health system”, “medication and treatment problems”, “costs and financing of the health system”, “inefficiencies related to health system employees”, “information and technology challenges”, “service challenges”, “health literacy and unfavorable lifestyle”, and “individual and social obstacles”, and the solutions to successfully face the aging phenomenon include “formulating laws and executive policies”, “prevention and treatment”, “supplying and developing resources”, “development of knowledge and technological performance”, “development of stakeholders’ participation”, “elderly centered”, and “social determinants of health”. The breadth and diversity of the findings indicate that the health system should be updated and strengthened in various social, economic, political, legislative, and executive dimensions in order to successfully tackle the aging phenomenon, and it should consider empowerment and attitude improvement programs of managers and health staff as well as the elderly.