title: Is the value of Community Healthcare Agents in Brazil's Family Health Strategy receiving full recognition?
abstract: This paper discusses meanings produced by Community Healthcare Agents (ACSs) on whether or not they feel that ACSs in Brazil's Family Health Strategy are receiving the recognition they deserve, considering their work with social networks. Discussion groups with 28 agents of six Health Units were held, sound-recorded and transcribed. Qualitative analysis of the material enables us to identify, in the discursive practices of ACSs, a tension on whether proper value is attributed to their work, or not. There was attribution of value when they talk of their activity in close proximity with the community, and their potential for construction of human connections; but there was non-attribution of value when they talk of the system's macro-structural aspects, such as low salaries, and low recognition of their function, in comparison to higher-level professionals. We conclude that the view of their work - still involving fragmented work processes, and expectation by the population that they will be able to provide immediate solutions to demands - might be preventing them from taking on board a more wide-ranging concept of primary healthcare, as a structuring and communication agent of the Healthcare Network, and as an organizing agent of Brazil's Unified Health System.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicologia, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo. Av. Bandeirantes 3900/Bl. 5/33A, Monte Alegre. 14090-901 Ribeirão Preto SP Brasil. carlaguanaes@ffclrp.usp.br.
authors.forename: Carla
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Guanaes-Lorenzi
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Psicologia, Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto, Universidade de São Paulo. Av. Bandeirantes 3900/Bl. 5/33A, Monte Alegre. 14090-901 Ribeirão Preto SP Brasil. carlaguanaes@ffclrp.usp.br.
authors.forename: Ricardo Lana
authors.initials: RL
authors.lastname: Pinheiro
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001938:Brazil; D003153:Community Health Services; D003150:Community Health Workers; D005192:Family Health; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007588:Job Satisfaction; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D055815:Young Adult