en تخصصي Special پژوهشي Research <p><span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>Introduction:</strong> Health improvement, control of communicable diseases and increase in life expectancy among the elderly of developed and developing countries has greatly increased. Since the health care and social needs of older adults differ from that of other adults, it is necessary to identify the needs of the elderly in order to make proper plans that will promote their health. The aim of this paper is to critically review these researches.</span></span></p> <p></p> <p><span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>Methods:</strong> A comprehensive literature review on the needs assessment of elderly health was applied searching English and Persian databases in Pub Med, Science Direct, ProQuest, Elsevier, Magiran, ISC and using key words including, Health need, Assessment, Elderly, Aging, Older adults, Aged and Health care needs.</span></span></p> <p></p> <p><span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>Results:</strong> Initial search yielded 745 references, considering the inclusion criteria, 21 papers were reviewed. Results revealed that in conducting needs assessment, various methods and procedures in various health dimensions including physical health, mental health, emotional, care, social, cultural, economic, nutritional, service, security, legal and educational needs have been utilized. Some of the dimensions had been more explored and some rarely.</span></span></p> <p></p> <p><span style="font-size:16px;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><strong>Conclusion</strong>: Most of the conducted studies had mainly focused on the elderly physical health needs and had neglected to take in to account other needs such as social and health care needs. In order to comprehensively recognize the health needs of the elderly, identifying their health care and care services is also important. Furthermore, in addition to quantitative studies, discovering the older adults&rsquo; perceptions of their own health needs is also necessary. It seems that the challenge ahead of managers, experts and researchers on elderly health is trying to design comprehensive mechanisms of health need assessment and considering it as a reference for any future planning.</span></span></p> Aged, Needs Assessment, Health, Review Literature as Topic 1 9 http://ehj.ssu.ac.ir/browse.php?a_code=A-10-55-1&slc_lang=en&sid=1 Sima Ghasemi No Department of Basic Sciences, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran Nastaran Keshavarz Mohammadi n_keshavars@yahoo.com Yes Department of Health Education and Health Promotion, School of Public Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran Farahnaz Mohammadi Shahboulaghi No Iranian Research Center on Aging, University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences, Tehran, Iran Ali Ramezankhani No Department of Health Education and Health Promotion, School of Public Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran