Avaliação do programa saúde da família no Rio Grande do Norte

The Family Health Program implemented in Brazilian municipalities from 1994 represents today the most promising proposal to promote important changes in municipality`s health systems, to allow universal access to health care, comprehensiveness, equity and to promote social control, achievements provided by the health reform process and incorporated to the Unified Health System principles. However, many are the challenges imposed to the Family Health Program so that it can cause these advances. In this study, we aimed to answer the following research question: what are the results of the Family Health Program in relation to beneficiaries at small, medium and large municipalities? The hypothesis that guided this work was that the variation in levels of achievement/results (strict, impacts and effects) of the Family Health Program is related to the size of the municipalities. Therefore, our general aim was to evaluate the results of the Family Health Program in municipalities at Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. And as specific objectives, to measure strict results, effects and impacts of the Program, from the criteria of efficiency and effectiveness on the beneficiated population, and to measure the Program`s impact on the organization of municipality`s health system. This is an impact assessment research, developed from multiple case studies with quanti-qualitative approach. The study included small municipalities (Acari and Taipu), midsize (Canguaretama and Santa Cruz) and large (Natal and Mossoró). The individuals chosen to the research were users/beneficiaries of the Program and health professionals. Data analysis was performed using descriptive statistics and content analysis compared from the Program`s logical /theoretical model. The results obtained in relation to the principles evaluated (universality, comprehensiveness and community participation) presented that municipalities show different results, although not directly related to the size, but related with characteristics of the Program`s implementation form in each municipality and the arrangements made for its operationalization. The positive effect that generated significant change in people`s lives has been linked to the increase of access and to the decrease of geographic barriers. However, to the municipal health system, regarding the changes desired by the Program, it was not observed a positive impact, but a negative impact related to the increase of barriers for the user to access other levels of the health system

Diagnóstico da comercialização de produtos da medicina popular em feiras livres do semiárido do Rio Grande do Norte: avaliações socioeconômicas e sanitárias, com proposta de legislação específica

Historically, man has empirically acquired knowledge about the therapeutic applications of extracted elements of the natural environment in which belonged. Such knowledge over time culminated in the formation of traditional health systems. Among its features, the use of bioactive plant species - medicinal plants - stands out for its efficiency and high popular acceptance. Despite its importance for public health, the population still has in the open-air fairs the main source for the acquisition of the species used. In these spaces, the trade generally occurs informally, under unfavorable conditions to the quality of the products and to the financial sustainability of the business. In this context, this study aimed to characterize the socioeconomic, cultural and sanitary aspects related to the trade of medicinal plants in municipalities of a semiarid region of Rio Grande do Norte, and additionally, proposing a specific legislation to the activity. Socioeconomic data were collected through on-site interviews, guided by structured form. The observations about the hygienic and sanitary adequacy of physical facilities and practices employed at the point of sale /environment were conducted and recorded with the use of assessment tool developed for use in open markets. The adequacy of medicinal plants to consumption was determined by microbiological analysis. The activity was carried out by individuals who are aged between 21 and 81 years of age, low educational level and low-income, predominantly males. The data showed a tendency to extinction of the activity in all the districts studied. It was observed in all the fairs studied hygiene and sanitation inadequacies that characterized very high health risk, representing in this way, the high probability of Food Transmitted Diseases outbreaks Such conditions were reflected in the high percentage of inadequacy to the consumption of the analyzed medicinal plants samples, illustrating the potential health risk to consumers. To contribute to the correction of hygiene and sanitation inadequacies observed in the studied open-air fairs, educational interventions were made to the training of traders in Good Practices. As a complement, was drafted a specific legislation for the marketing of folk medicine's products in open-air fairs. Such actions, products and its developments will contribute significantly to improving the quality of products available to the population and the preservation of activity, potentially reducing the risks to public health.

Iniqüidade em saúde: uma extensão das desigualdades sociais no sistema público de saúde do Brasil (2003-2006)

This issue analises the unevenness in the brazilian system of public health care as an extension of socials inequities. It is a theoretical study based in a historical method, using empirical camp from academic, corporation and institution researchs, along the period 2002-2006. Equality and effectiveness in health systems are analitical basic cathegories grap in the root of the doctrine, principles and organization of the Unique Health System, in which sectorial actions are inserted. Discuss the estructural prodution and determined those inequalities through some social determiners of health system: income, land, food securitiy, nutritional situation, basic sanitation, epidemiological inequities and public management policy. Carry out a thematic review over health social production, it formlation and the goals of social policies, as well as the insertion of the equality principle in the assistance system, in the frame of the running public health regulations. It uses reflections that enlighted the correlation between the process of political-institutional actions and equity on health assistance. Analized the pertinency of sectorial reorganizational strategies on basic attendance, confronting the hipothesis that those strategies reinforce social inequities in health system, because it organize diferential assistance levels over not equal baselines. The results show up that social inequalities, even remaining, have had a small decrease; that the selectiviness of actual public policies and the duplication of the health system, increases the differences within and between the social classes and configures the assistance as inequal. The basic care system has great shortages that also appeares in middle and complex assistance levels. As conclusion, it remarks that the health assintance system, even with it integrality has limits; structural problems on material conditions of living and health system could not be reversed only with institutional legal arragements; by the contrary, in border conditions, these strategies produce policies that reinforce inequities, neglecting the equity principle of the system in which frame, they work. One patina of this tim

Influência da idade, do sexo e da hora do dia no desempenho em teste de labirinto

The increase of elderly population in the world and in Brazil has indicated the necessity of health systems capable to evaluate, to diagnose and to intervene in the conditions of health and disease of that segment. During that stage of human development, physical and cognitive changes happen and they are capable to influence the functional acting. It s important to distinguish the limit between the normal and the pathological. Besides the common changes during the aging, biological rhithmicity changes happen, as alterations in the cycle vigil-sleep that can influence in certain tasks performance. This study aimed to verify the influence of the age, of the sex and of the hour in a maze test performance. Eighty individuals were evaluated, 40 youths (20 men and 20 women) and 40 senior (20 men and 20 women). They were separated in 2 different groups that were tested at 9:00 o clock and at 15:00 o clock. Initially they were submitted to health evaluation, cognitive evaluation and of sleep quality and chronotype. They were instructed to accomplish the maze test whose time of execution was timed and registered. Significant differences were observed according to age for the masculine group between elderly in the morning and in the afternoon and in the feminine group between youth and elderly in the test accomplished in the morning and in the afternoon. Significant differences were not observed according to sex and hour of the day and also between attempts. In compare between the 30th and the31st, accomplished in a 15minutes of interval, significant difference was observed just for the elderly group in the morning and in the afternoon. We observed significant correlations in the maze test performance with the cronotype, with the age, with the education and with the cognitive acting. The maze test was capable to detect differences between age in the acting profile and in the evaluation of the information maintenance after 15 minutes, however it was not possible to verify difference between sex and hour of the day. Finally the correlations of the maze test with another varied may indicate your importance as coadjutant instrument in those functions evaluation

A relação entre os determinantes sociais em saúde e os investimentos setoriais e a mortalidade infantil em municípios brasileiros com mais de 80 mil habitantes

Investments in health have controversial influence on results of the health of populations, besides being subject rarely explored in literature. Moreover, from the 1970s, the social determinants of health have been consolidated in the disease process as multifactorial factors (social, economic, cultural, etc.) that directly or indirectly influence the occurrence of health problems of populations, as well as mortality rates. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of these investments and the social determinants of health on infant mortality and its neonatal and post-neonatal mortality. This is an ecological study, in which the sample was composed of Brazilians cities with over 80,000 inhabitants, avoiding fluctuations in mortality rates for common small populations, and ensure greater coverage of information systems on mortality and births Brazilians and, therefore, increase data consistency. To isolate the effect of investments in health, we used multiple linear regression. The socioeconomic indicators (p <0.001, p = 0.004, p <0.001), the inequality index (p <0.001, p = 0.001, p = 0.006) and coverage of prenatal visits (p <0.001, p <0.001; p = 0.005) were associated with infant mortality rate total, neonatal and post-neonatal, and the Gross Domestic Product per capita only influenced the overall infant mortality rate and neonatal (p=0.022; 0.045). Investments in health, in this model, lost statistical significance, showing no correlation with mortality rates among children under one year. We conclude that the social determinants of health has an influence on the variation in mortality rates of Brazilian cities, however the same was not observed for indicators of health investment