Healthy Community as Conceptualized by Residents of Tehran City

Intruduction :Several studies have been already conducted to explore social health related indexs due to the importance of this concept that the existing definitions of health are usually defined based on the experts’ views and less attention has been paid to the grass-root people’s experiences and in some instances, those experiences have even been neglected. According to the necessity the present study is going to develope and formulate a comperhensive definition on social health based on people’s experiences and perceptions. In this study, the “Focused Group Discussion” method was used through holding three focused group discussion sessions, participated with 22 residents of Tehran City and the characterics and aspects of healthy community were extracted by using qualitative content analysis method. The present study identified 14 following characteristics for “healthy community” based on the experiences and perceptions of residents of Tehran:Government’s proper performance of its duties (in planning, social welfare, establishing democratic freedoms, laws and procedural justice, meritocracy, social justice and social security establishment scopes), emotional, mental and spiritual health, culture and social values, healthy family, lower social problems, social capital, economic security, healthy education system, social vitality, healthy environment, political security, neutrality of government regarding people’s personal opinions, physical health and food security. The present study showed that a part of experiences and perception of people as characteristics of healthy community have some commonalities with experiences of other countries, including emotional, mental and spiritual health, healthy environment, physical health, food security, social capital, lower social problems; while a number of the charasteristics were found in our society including suitable performance of duties in part of government (democratic freedoms, procedural justice, meritocracy), healthy education system and neutrality of government against people’s personal opinion