Table 2.

the sub-themes of involvement of charities

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