Introduction: Doings self-care activitiesincrease people's awareness, self-confidenceand improve their self-efficacy.Social factors such as place, culture, available resource, social support and economic status are affected health status.We hypnotized that self-care behavior between women lived in urban and rural setting is different, so, the study was developed to compare the self-care activities, barriers and information source between rural and urban middle aged women. Materials and Methods:This cross-sectional study was done on 366 women lived in urban and rural area. The data collection tools included a questionnaire of determinants of social health and aquestionnaire for evaluation of self-care activities and barriers.Data were analyzed through descriptive and inferential statistical tests by using SPSS version 13 software. P-value less than 0.05 were considered significant. Results:Rural population had lower educational level and the performance of self-care activities in urban population was more than rural women, especially activities which need to professional health care such as mammography, pap smear, etc. Eating fruits and vegetables had higher incidence in urban participants than rural women too.Conclusion:The findings of this research indicated that women especially in rural setting had low level of self-care activities and more barriers was noticeable. So, this make a concern, and increasing self-care activities is a big public health challenge for health managers.
