DOI: 10.34172/ijhpm.10065 ISSN: 2322-5939

Preparing Health Systems for Therapeutic Hybridization Comment on "Routes of Well-Being, Spiritual Harmony and Recovery in Mental Health: The Community as a Policy-Maker"

Marcela Guapacha-Montoya, Diana Carolina Aguirre-Flórez

This commentary builds on a policy-oriented understanding of recovery as a co-produced route of well-being, spiritual harmony, and community participation. It examines therapeutic hybridization: the negotiated articulation of biomedical care, ancestral practices, spiritual resources, family support, territorial meanings, and community-based recovery. Rather than treating these arrangements as informal adaptations or cultural supplements, health systems must govern, finance, evaluate, and protect plural forms of care without subordinating Indigenous knowledge. Drawing primarily on Colombian cases and wider literature on community health systems, cultural safety, and intercultural policy, the commentary proposes six domains of preparedness: governance, care pathways, financing, workforce, clinical safety, and learning systems. The agenda is intended as an adaptable, non-exhaustive framework for settings where plural therapeutic systems already interact and where communities can share authority over design and evaluation. Therapeutic hybridization is therefore presented as a test of whether health systems can redistribute legitimacy, resources, and decision-making authority.

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