The Impact of Future World Events on Iranians’ Social Health: A Qualitative Futurology

BACKGROUND Social health is a dimension of health affected and interacts with other dimensions. Considering the rate of world changes, foresighting the influence of future events and possible trends on social health could bring about advantageous information for social policy makers. METHODS This is a qualitative study of futurology with cross impact analysis approach. After studying possible trends and events in future, they were categorized in four domains including population, resources, climate changes, and globalization and 12 groups of events; and they were used to design a questionnaire. It was given to experts and their opinions were collected through depth interviews between May 2013 and Sep 2013. RESULTS Analysis of experts' opinions reveals that future trends in four main potential domains may have some positive and more negative impacts on Iranians' social health. CONCLUSION The global "resource challenge" is the most important incoming event, considering to the four domains of global events and its final and potential effects will be the increase of inequalities leading to social threat. Since inequalities are considered the most important risk factor of health in the societies, the solution for dispel the impact of world trends on Iranians' social health is managing the crisis of inequalities which is started with fore sighting and adopting preventive strategies in all four domains.