Cultural Policy Mismatches in Representing the Place of Traditional Iranian Medicine in the Health System

Despite the thousands of years old of traditional Iranian medicine background, this health care system has not yet been able to find a complementary place in modern medical treatment. This study is an attempt to show the political mismatch in the field of cultural contextualization that is necessary for determining the place of traditional medicine in the Iranian health system. The research method is exploratory study with a qualitative approach that has used the thematic analysis method of Brand and Clark to extract and analyze the data. The applied tool was in-depth interviews with 30 key specialists and experts in traditional medicine. After extracting the main concepts and reviewing the upstream documents, the sub-themes and finally the main theme were gradually obtained. The results of this survey make it clear that some of the inconsistencies in traditional medicine go back to the mismatches of cultural policy in representing the position of Iranian traditional medicine, which is subject to cultural resistance in some parts of society and the medical education system. At the same time, the ideological formulation of some proponents of traditional medicine and the incoordination within and between departments in relevant organizations to introduce and realistically inform the capabilities of this medical knowledge has caused incredulity in some members of society to the capacity of this knowledge.