The Role of Individual Responsibility Towards Health in Prioritizing the Provision of Health Services by Health Policy Makers in Iran

Aimed at investigating role of personal responsibility for health in prioritization of providing health services from the viewpoint of organ donors referring to the Center for Organ Donation in Mashhad, Iran, the present research has been conducted in spring 2021.

This is a descriptive – cross sectional study conducted among organ donors. Required data is collected via a standard questionnaire designed to measure tendency towards donating an organ to two patients seeking liver donation. Questionnaire data was fed into software where it was analyzed via descriptive and analytic statistics as wells as content analysis for open questions.

Finally, the analyses undertaken on 214 questionnaires collected indicated that, of total number of responders, the number of those who tended to donate their organs to patients with hereditary diseases was 4 – 5 times as large as the number of responders who tended to donate their organs to the drug addiction-resulted patients. Furthermore, 74% of the responders believed that, individuals actually take part in either their health or diseases.

Responsibility for health represented an important factor in making decisions regarding the prioritization of providing health services among the responders. Presentation of comprehensive and neutral reasoning contributed to the elimination of misconceptions within the responders’ minds (if any), so that, with their minds opened, they can answer the questions in a non-biased manner. It is worth noting that, the responders had their opinions not significantly changed once they read the ideas raised in the questionnaire, and most of them still relied, in their choices, on the principle of responsibility for health.