Ranking Maternal Health Status in Rural Areas in Iran Based on Multivariate Techniques of Factor and Cluster Analysis

Background & Objectives: Maternal health status is one the important health index since it could be a hallmark of performance of health care service particularly in rural area. The aim of this study is ranking and identifying homogeneous provinces based on maternal health indices in Iran.Methods: Based on the indices in the vital horoscope which were reported by Iran Ministry of Health in 2006, fifteen indices related to maternal health have been selected. Using factor analysis, a factor that can represent rural maternal health in provinces was chosen and provinces ranked according to it. A hierarchical cluster analysis employed for identifying homogenous province based on a distance matrix obtained from the same selected indices in factor analysis. Results: Factor analysis demonstrated that 89% of data variation included in this model. Based on an appropriate factor as index of maternal health, ranking was run in all provinces in Iran. According to this model, the maternal health status was in good condition in the rural areas of Gilan, Mazandaran and Tehran provinces, respectively. While maternal health were in inappropriate condition in rural areas of Khuzestan, Kohkiluyeh and Hormozgan provinces. The worst rural area was the province of Sistan and Baluchestan.Conclusion: It could be concluded that employing multivariate analysis would be an effective tool for ranking and classifying homogeneous population (provinces) in terms of maternal health indices. Therefore health policy makers should consider the practical method of this analysis for any decision making