Community-based health promotion requires effective participation
and partnership of diverse and numerous stakeholders
from community as well as external professional
organizations. Although effective partnership of stakeholders
is often the key for success of health promotion
practice and research, but this has proved to be a complex
and challenging task. This study is an exploratory study
to identify professional stakeholder’s perspectives and
experiences toward the partner’s engagement challenges
in community-based participatory research conducted in
Population Research Centers in Iran. A qualitative study
design with in-depth semi-structured interviews as data
collection method was chosen. Using purposeful sampling
technique, policy-makers and managers (mainly academics)
involved in community-based participatory research
in these centers were invited to be interviewed. Data
were collected to the point where no new information was
forthcoming. All interviews were taped and transcribed. To
provide answers for research questions, qualitative content
analysis was employed to extract emerging main themes
from numerous cods. Findings were categorized in three
main themes as Partnership’s relationship and trust issues,
Partnership’s individual issues and Partnership’s system
issues. Although community-based participatory research
in Iran benefits from more than a decade history and some
physical infrastructures, but it seems that public health
experts and researchers and other partner organizations are
lagging behind in terms of capacities and competencies
required to effectively utilize the available structure and opportunities.
Hence, capacity development, both among professional
partners and community may be the main way
forward to tackling the future challenges for strengthening
community actions but should include both levels of individuals
and systems.