Improvement in Primary Care access and quality: the perspective of Community Health Workers

ABSTRACT The study aimed to describe how the participation of Community Health Workers (CHW) took place in the National Program for Access and Quality Improvement in Primary Care (PAQI-PC), and to evaluate their perspective regarding improvements in both the access and the quality of Primary Care (PC). This is a descriptive, cross-sectional study with quantitative approach, carried out with 133 CHWs linked to family health teams that joined the program. Results pointed out the need of greater efforts by municipalities to encourage the involvement of CHWs in evaluation processes and to improve their training, aiming at adjusting their level of apprehension and awareness of both the access and the quality in primary care.