ABSTRACT
This investigation focus on the work process of Community Health Agents (ACS) as an effort to understand how they operate their practices, give meaning to their work, and establish relationships in a territorial context and the Basic Health Unit (BHU). For this purpose, we carried out participant observations in six BHU along ten months. For the analysis, we built the concept of ‘visibility plans’ referent to the ACS’s work dimensions, not always immediately visible, as a sensitive coexistence with many forms of violence and drug trafficking in the territory, the difficult management of the community’s secrecy, and even the population’s refusal regarding household visits, a central component to their action. It has also been demonstrated how the ACS have become a sort of ‘multitask worker’ within the HCC in a precarious or provisional nature, aside from the often difficult relationship with the health care team. A changing worker has been revealed reproducing biomedical and bureaucratic practices, which may disfigure their bonding role with the community, but who also permanently (re)invents their practices in a more complex way than prescribed in the original formulations of health policies due to, among other factors, the complexity of the territories where they are active.
KEYWORDS
Community Health Workers; Primary Health Care; Qualitative research