Contribution of community health workers to primary health care performance in brazil

• Autor(a) principal: Alaneir Santos
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Hugo André da Rocha, Angela Maria de Lourdes Dayrell de Lima, Daisy Maria Xavier de Abreu, Érica Araújo Silva Lopes, Lucas Lobato Araujo, Isabela Cristina Carreiro Cavalcante, Antônio Thomaz Gonzaga da Matta Machado
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/60723
• topic: Primary Health Care; Community Health Workers; Health Services Research; Primary Health Care; Health Services Research; Community Health Workers

OBJECTIVE: To associate the strength of community health workers interventions with primary health care strategies for women’s and children’s health, diabetes, and hypertension.METHODS: This is a cross-sectional study assessing 29,778 family health teams working in primary health care in Brazil in 2014. The association between community health workers activity levels and primary health care facilities was analyzed using multiple logistic regression.RESULTS: We found higher levels of community health workers activities strongly associated with primary health care practices (OR = 6.88) for those activities targeting hypertension management, followed by children’s health (OR = 6.56), and women’s health (OR = 6.21).CONCLUSIONS: At a time when Brazil discusses whether community health workers should or should not remain in the same scale-up and skill level as they currently are, our results reinforce the importance of these workers for the care model advocated by the Brazilian Unified Health System.