Primary healthcare and the community social worker profile in historical perspective

• Autor(a) principal: Fonseca, Angélica Ferreira
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Morosini, Márcia Valéria Guimarães Cardoso, Mendonça, Maria Helena Magalhães
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Trabalho, Educação e Saúde (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://www.tes.epsjv.fiocruz.br/index.php/tes/article/view/1390
• topic: atenção primária à saúde; trabalho em saúde; agente comunitário de saúde; primary healthcare; work in health; community health agent

In several countries, and in Brazil in particular, the adoption of primary care as a factor to reorder health systems has been consolidated by highlighting the community worker, who is called a community health agent in the Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS, Unified Health System). Understanding that this fact has ancient roots, this paper, with a historical perspective, is developed based on a review of documents and literature, guided by the mapping of projects put into dispute. In the analysis, tensions that permeated the configuration of healthcare proposals with these characteristics were distinguished: continuous action and linkage to the territory; health education as a relevant strategy, and the connection between health services and local populations, mediated by a worker who has this role as his or her primary social role. Also analyzed were features that constitute the work of the community health worker in the SUS, which represent challenges to the qualifications of these workers, having the rights associated with the work, and the complexity of the healthcare work and its technical and political role as a parameter.