A review of Iranian health system's laws, policies and reforms over the last four decades: A retrospective approach

Health is one of the main dimensions of social policies that governments adopt with the aim of reducing social inequalities. The economic and political structure in Iran has made the importance government's approach play a more important role in determining health policies. The present study aimed to identify the reforms, laws and policies adopted by the Iranian health system after the Islamic Revolution and the impact of each on the functions of the health system. 

This is a review study that identified the policies of the Iran health system between 1357 and 1399. Data collection was done by manual search on the websites of the relevant organizations. The documents were selected based on Jupp's four dimensions, and 101 documents were finally included. To classify the documents, the six-building block framework of World Health Organization was used.

The findings of this study are categorized according to the approved policies in the field of health in the 3rd to 12th governments after the Islamic Revolution. Of the 26 policies approved during the years 1360 to 1368 and 31 policies approved from 1369 to 1376, the most cases were related to the service delivery dimension. However, the policies related to governance and leadership had the highest number among the 29 policies approved during the years 1377 to 1384 and 11 policies approved during the years 1385 to 1392.

 An overview of the five periods of the development program shows that the attention of health policymakers has shifted from service delivery to governance and leadership; Meanwhile, other functions, especially the health information system, have been neglected during the years 1385 to 1395.