Health Centers

Iran’s health centers belong to a primary-care network designed to bring services closer to where people live. A historical study of district health networks describes administration through the Ministry of Health and Medical Education, universities of medical sciences and district executive units. At the rural frontline are health houses, known in Persian as khaneh behdasht. s1

These facilities are associated with behvarz: locally recruited community health workers trained to provide basic services. Their work extends beyond treating an immediate complaint to maintaining health information, educating families, supporting maternal and child health, vaccination and environmental health activities. Rural health centers provide professional support and outpatient care while supervising health-house activities. s1

The documented rural support and referral structure

The arrows distinguish contact, clinical referral, supervision and administration. This summarizes the rural model described in the cited historical study; it does not establish that every referral is completed or describe an emergency pathway.

Urban health posts and comprehensive health centers form another part of this community-facing infrastructure. A study published in March 2026 describes the difficulty of extending the achievements of rural primary care to cities, where urbanization, population aging and noncommunicable diseases create different demands. Noncommunicable diseases are conditions such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease that require sustained prevention and follow-up rather than a response to a single infection. s2

The distinction between a health post and a comprehensive center matters. WHO’s description assigns frontline urban work to health posts, while comprehensive health centers provide broader professional teams and supervise linked posts or health houses. The described teams include general physicians and professionals concerned with midwifery, nutrition, mental health, dentistry and environmental or occupational health. This is a service model, not confirmation that every facility has every professional continuously available. s3

The March 2026 urban primary-care study used interviews with health-system informants to examine financing. It identified unstable resources, limited allocations to preventive care, insurance-system inefficiencies and weaknesses in purchasing and resource management. These findings describe stakeholder accounts and the researchers’ analysis; they are not a national audit of each center’s budget. s2

Its proposed responses included more reliable preventive-care funding and purchasing arrangements aligned with health outcomes. Those proposals should be understood as recommendations, not completed reforms. s2

Health centers are consequently best understood through their combined functions: local access, prevention, continuing community contact and professional support for frontline workers. Their contribution cannot be judged solely by the number of consultations. Whether this model works locally also depends on staffing, resources and functioning connections with the next level of care. s1s2s3