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Introduction: Community health volunteers link people and health workers and they voluntarily contribute to community health. Given the importance of the engagement of volunteers in promoting health programs and improving the quality of care provided, this study aimed to explore the experience and perceptions of community health volunteers of comprehensive health service centers in the western regions of Ahvaz to identify the most critical factors motivating their participation in health programs. Methods: This qualitative study was conducted in 2017 on community health volunteers in comprehensive health service centers in western Ahvaz. The data were collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews conducted face-to-face with 35 community health volunteers. The conventional qualitative content analysis approach was used to analyze the collected data. Results: Data analysis revealed 302 primary codes, 27 subthemes, and ten main themes. The ten main themes extracted in this study, including the physical context, organizational context, social context, climatic context, cultural context, increasing health knowledge, material factors, psychological factors, social factors, and spiritual factors, constituted the factors affecting the community health volunteers’ motivation to participate in health programs. Conclusion: Community health volunteers’ motivation to participate in health programs is influenced by factors such as physical context, organizational context, social context, climatic context, cultural context, increasing health knowledge, material factors, psychological factors, social factors, and spiritual factors. Thus, failure to pay attention to these factors will reduce the community health volunteers’ incentives to promote health programs, decrease volunteers’ cooperation with centers, reduce the quality of care provided, and ultimately waste the funds spent on volunteers’ training and preparation. |
