Opinion – Public Health: Recognizing good practices in primary health care: the case of Recife

The process of building public policies in primary care is closely linked to the “bottom up” logic, where innovations from family health teams (eSFs) and basic health units (UBS) are incorporated into the set. promotion, prevention, treatment, cure and rehabilitation actions available to the population.

The city of Recife has always stood out in this centripetal logic, especially when we consider that local programs and experiences were adopted at the national level by the Ministry of Health. Examples such as the City Academies, responsible for encouraging the practice of physical activities, and the Horus System, used for dispensing medicines at UBS, demonstrate the enormous capacity of the capital of Pernambuco to propose adequate solutions for the most varied territorial and epidemiological contexts. In the pandemic, the city also created interesting mechanisms to avoid agglomerations in calls and encourage the practice of exercises at home (Atende em Casa and Movimenta Recife apps).

This ability to innovate and disseminate good practices is a key value for the Technical Cooperation Agreement signed in 2021 by the Health Secretariat (SESAU) of the City of Recife (PCR) and the Institute of Studies for Health Policies (IEPS). The agreement is mainly oriented towards the identification, experimentation, codification and dissemination of new ways of producing and managing health.

Considering this collaborative process, one of the initiatives developed by the work of PCR and IEPS, with the support of UMANE, is Recife Recognise, a public notice published by the Recife School of Health and which aims to give visibility and reward good practices carried out by the municipal network. of primary health care. Practices aligned with the main thematic axes in the scope of primary care will be considered by the Public Notice: (1) Attributes of Primary Care, (2) Life Cycles and Population Groups, (3) Health Care in the Territory and (4) Health Promotion, Integrative and Complementary Practices and Intersectoral Practices.

The submitted experiences will be evaluated by a judging committee composed of specialists from the Executive Secretariat of Primary Care of Recife (SEAB), by the Recife School of Health (ESR) and by the Health Policy Laboratory (LPS) of the IEPS. After the evaluation, a list will be published with the pre-selection of the best practices and experiences, which will be submitted to a vote by the health professionals of the primary care network, valuing the democratic and participatory culture of the municipality. The finalist and winning practices will be certified and awarded by the ESR and IEPS.

In the current scenario of the pandemic’s cooling, primary care professionals are faced with extremely difficult realities: worsening health problems of people affected by chronic non-communicable diseases, increased social vulnerability and the need to renegotiate the logic of family health in the territories. Therefore, it is urgent to recognize, reward and codify good practices as a way of motivating primary care networks to act according to the precepts of equity, universality and integrality of the SUS. May Recife continue to be at the forefront of proposing solutions for public health!