Economic instability, income, and unemployment effects on mortality: using SUR panel data in Iran.

This study aims to investigate the effects of socioeconomic factors on mortality in Iran. To this end, this research examines how economic instability, income, and unemployment affect mortality using a seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) with panel data for 30 provinces in Iran from 2004 to 2019. The results indicate that unemployment and mortality have a countercyclical relationship among the working age-groups 20-59 but a procyclical pattern among old-age (60+), except for rural mortality. This result is harmonious between employment and age-group mortality. This finding implies that unemployment increases mortality in working age-groups due to psychological stress and poverty risk. In addition, the income level decreases mortality in all ages over 40 years due to the provision of higher access to health and medical services and social welfare. However, it increases mortality in rural areas and age-group 20-39 because of their hazardous, unsafe, and stressful work conditions. Therefore, policymakers should plan for an inclusive economic growth to reduce poverty and out-of-pocket payments and increase the quality and accessibility of public health services, especially for beneficiaries of lower social groups. Moreover, they should adopt strategies to alleviate the burden of premature, preventable, and treatable deaths.

Identifying and Prioritizing Strategies for Developing Medical Tourism in the Social Security Organization of Iran: A SWOT-AHP Hybrid Approach.

BACKGROUND: The present study aimed to identify and prioritize strategies for medical tourism improvement in the Social Security Organization (SSO) of Iran. METHODS: Using Delphi method in the first step, we identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that Social Security Organization of Iran faces in medical tourism during 2017-2018. In the second step we interviewed 100 medical and tourism experts to identify proper strategies using SWOT method and finally priori-tize strategies through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) by using Expert Choice software. RESULTS: The application of SWOT technique indicated that the dominant strategy for the Iranian SSO should be conservative. It should overcome its internal weaknesses and exploit its external opportunities. The Iranian Social Security Organization should arrange appropriate marketing in target countries, invest in international medical/hospital standards, boost the communicative competence of personnel in SSO hospitals and create multilingual web-based information to introduce the capabilities and costs of the hospitals. CONCLUSION: Since the SSO's weaknesses are more prominent than its strengths, thus SSO should plan to reduce its weaknesses to boost medical tourism. For this purpose, SSO should design coherent plans for attract medical tourists to the organization's hospitals, attempt to upgrade hospital and medical centers standards, train the medical staff regarding linguistic and communicative skills, and run a user-friendly website to introduce its medical capabilities.