title: [Of Brazil and Quebec, food for thought: Brazilian community health workers bridge the gap between families and health professionals].
abstract: The Brazilian unified health system consists of 27,000 family health teams with a network of approximately 300,000 community health agents whose mandate is to link the families they visit every month with health professionals at the family health unit. Since 2003, Quebec has been implementing its health and social services reforms by emphasizing the integration of care and services (public, associative and private) in local networks which have a formal population health responsibility. This commentary aims to underline some similarities and differences between the program of the Brazilian 'units of family health' and that of integrated network clinics (CRI) or Groups of family medicine (GMF) in Quebec. In both cases, a major concern is to organize primary care services in as close proximity as possible to the population of a given territory, and to improve accessibility and adequacy of services. In addition, through these community health agents, Brazil enables the creation of a social security network that assures an effective follow-up of all members of the population with regard to health services.
authors.affiliation: Département de communication sociale et publique, faculté de communication, UQAM, Montréal, QC. renaud.lise@uqam.ca
authors.forename: Lise
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Renaud
authors.forename: Margareth
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Zanchetta
authors.forename: Jacques
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Rhéaume
authors.forename: Roger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Côté
mesh_terms: D001938:Brazil; D018672:Community Health Planning; D003153:Community Health Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D003150:Community Health Workers; D019058:Community Networks; D019033:Delivery of Health Care, Integrated; D005192:Family Health; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D011792:Quebec; D012947:Social Work / Q000458:organization & administration*