A theory-driven organ donation campaign: a field intervention among university students in Iran

This study conducted an empirical evaluation of an intervention derived from the theory of planned behavior (TPB) aimed at implementing a health campaign among medical students at Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

In this interventional study, a valid and reliable TPB-based questionnaire was administered before launching a health campaign titled "Organ Donation=Life Donation" among 260 medical students. The campaign was structured around nine steps: situation analysis, goal identification, target audience identification, strategy development, tactics establishment, media selection, timetable creation, budget planning, and program evaluation. Two months after the campaign, participants completed a posttest and were offered an organ donation card. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS ver. 16, employing descriptive statistics (frequency and percentage) and tests such as the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and the paired-samples t-test.

All participants adopted more prodonation stances across all constructs measured, both immediately and 2 months after exposure to the health campaign, compared to their pretest scores. These results indicate that the health campaign had a significant impact on psychological variables such as attitudes (P<0.001), subjective norms (P<0.001), and perceived behavioral control (P<0.038), as well as on the actual acceptance of an organ donor card.

Effective health education and promotion interventions, including health campaigns, are essential to encourage the use of organ donation cards. Additionally, current experiences indicate that the TPB serves as a suitable theoretical framework for designing organ donation interventions.