Primary health care in CSP

Abstract

The search for primary health care (PHC) focused on people, families and territories, synergistic to the population's health needs and to the principles of the Brazilian Unified National Health System (SUS), is a fruitful and priority field for scientific production and dissemination. Over the course of approximately 30 years of implementation and consolidation of the Family Health Strategy (FHS) as a priority model of PHC in SUS several successful outcomes have been achieved; however, research results suggest some health issues are yet to be resolved, the resurgence of old problems and the advent of new challenges, the most recent being the COVID-19 pandemic.In 2008, Reports in Public Health/Cadernos de Saúde Pública (CSP) published a thematic supplement with an important Editorial 1 and Debate 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 about the challenges of FHS for the organization and strengthening of PHC in Brazil; the country's national policies and programs since the 2010s sought, in some way, to face them. More recently, the journal has also fostered reflections about the deconstruction policies of FHS's trajectory from central elements such as its conception, organization and financing, while the directionality failed to respond to recognized problems, nor do they offer new perspectives that have universality and solidarity as values 9,10 .The wide diversity of themes of this great field of research and practices that make up PHC is reflected in the manuscripts published by CSP over 345 issues (until July 2022), available free of charge for public access since 1985. Even if the journal does not comprise the whole of the production on FHS, we chose to consider, in this reflection, the articles published since 2000 -because that year is a milestone in the expansion and evaluation of FHS in Brazil 11 . This retrospective invites us to identify the main topics already addressed and those not yet sufficiently explored in the publication about FHS/PHC in CSP.The first decade of the 2000s presents us with a diversity of publications centered on the representations, attitudes and perceptions of users living with some health problem. We identified analyses related to access and reception, the attribute of care coordination, evaluation of the organization, offer of different care practices and adequacy of the program to ministerial standards, in addition to federal choices in financing and expansion. Topics such as pharmaceutical care, mental health, prenatal care and evaluation of oral health implantation under FHS also permeated the productions. Publications with results