Implementing a co-management space for primary health care: the Dialoga APS experience

Abstract

In Brazil, health is a constitutional right to be guaranteed through the Unified Health System, which is organized into a regionalized and hierarchical care network, with primary care as the organizer and coordinator of care. In this sense, continuing health education and institutional support are important tools for qualifying the system, through a model of co-management in health. This experience report aims to share the implementation of Dialoga APS, a space for co-management between institutional supporters and municipal primary care managers in Paraíba, Brazil. The space is developed through monthly meetings for reflection, discussion and collective construction of strategies to improve primary care work processes in various areas of activity, using active and critical-reflective methodologies based on permanent health education. Ninety-two meetings were held, reaching 90% of the state's municipalities, with an increasing number of participants at each meeting, reaching 1,545 professionals. It was identified that institutional support is a strategy capable of enabling the collective and democratic construction of new instruments and processes that have an impact on improving management and health care in the various territories. Mediated by the supporters, the Dialoga APS space made it possible to bring the federative entities closer together, to increase the capillari