Nurses' neglected capacity for controlling chronic diseases

Adapting with World Health Organization goals from the 1980s, the Iranian Health system made efforts to establish the “Health for All” plan, which resulted in reducing infectious disease. In the meantime, NCD has become the leading cause of death in Iran due to the expansion of urbanization and lifestyle changes. Next, the Iranian Ministry of Health took some actions and reform plans for encountering this issue. Nevertheless, each of them failed to achieve all of their pre-defined goals. Notably, the outcomes of the Health Reform Plan were highlighting secondary prevention and overcrowded hospitals. Considering that shifting efforts to PHC based and community-centered health care could be more effective in reducing Non-Communicable diseases. IraPEN is last introduced plan launched in 2014 by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, to provide universal health coverage, including access to NCD prevention and care. Some policymakers believe that the successful implementation of the program will require a new generation of health care providers. However, based on developed countries' experiences and recommendations of the World Health Organization, using the capacity of existing healthcare providers such as nurses would be more reasonable than introducing new health care providers. Now, Iran has lots of graduated nurses from bachelor to Ph.D. degree that is well-educated in preventive and community-based care. Nevertheless, based on the present policy, their role has been restricted in hospitals. Hence, using the existing capacity of nurses would be superior to introducing a new health care workforce.