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Table 2 the sub-themes of involvement of charities

From: Involvement of charities in Iran’s health care system: a qualitative study on problems and executive/legal/supportive requirements

Main themes

Sub-themes

Main objectives of charities in the health care system

- Helping the poor and the disadvantaged

- Preventing diseases, promoting education, and expanding empowerment

Services at prevention level

- Screening for communicable/non-communicable diseases

- Training

- Disseminating health-oriented information

- Equipping and developing infrastructure in health care centers

- Participating in health-related research

- Training health educators

- Providing counseling and supportive services

- Distributing food supplements and preventing malnutrition-related diseases

- Supplying health-hygiene tools

Services at treatment level

- Offering pharmaceutical services

- Delivering a wide range of treatment services for all types of diseases

- Manufacturingknowledge-based products

- Arranging for home care support services

- Purchasing medical equipment

- Constructing hospitals

- Covering expenditures

- Giving support services in an indirect manner

Services at rehabilitation level

- Implementing physiotherapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy

- Providing financial support for rehabilitation services

Legal/executive/supportive requirements for charitable activities

- Discovering causes of diseases and health risk factors by the Ministry of - Health and Medical Education

- Introducing areas in need of more involvement

- Developing main strategies to get charities engaged in planning and policy-making

- Holding educational courses and programs specially in the field of management and empowerment

- Granting special taxes and legacy exemptions

- Helping charities in attracting multi-source financial resources and selling their products and services

- Giving practical motivation to charities by the government

Main problems facing health charities

- Neglecting charities by the government and having poor faith in these organizations

- Financing in an unsustainable manner

- Giving insufficient financial aids to people

- Doing parallel works

- Having inadequate cooperation between governmental/non-governmental agencies and donors

- Having inadequate public participation due to weaknesses in advertising and attracting charitable donations

- Lacking a legal status for donors

- Having no involvement in policy-making and planning

- Encountering exhausting executive processes

- Having no clear goals and policies

- Not having public awareness towards purposeful aids in the health care system

Suggested strategies

- Contributingby the government through programs and interventions in financial affairs of charities

- Granting special taxes and legacy exemptions

- Setting up endowment funds

- Fulfilling scientific management

- Taking over responsibilities for supervising and organizing charities by separate organizations independent of the Ministry of Health and Medical Education

- Giving responsibilities to charities

- Asking charities to play a partin health-related decisions and policies

- Holding various meetings to have appropriate interactions between universities and donors

- Gaining donors’ trust

Main sources of financing charities

- Donating from the public

- Generating income by charities

- Granting by the government in the form of special budget lines

- Paying membership fees by clients

Extra-organizational communications of charities

- Municipality

- Governorate office

- State Welfare Organization of Iran

- Universities of medical sciences

- Pharmaceutical companies

- Insurance companies

- Ministry of Education

- Endowments and Charity Affairs Organization

How to coordinate activities of charities and other parts of the health care system

- Establishing a relationship between insurance companies and the Ministry of Health and Medical Education

- Making governmental managers informed of challenges as well as financing and managerial status of charities

- Establishing a constructive relationship

- Having interactions but no competitions

- Using ideas raised by charitable organizations in health-related decisions and policies