Community health in primary health care teams: a management objective

Objective: To describe the process of development of community health in a territory where the Primary Health Care board decided to include it in its roadmap as a strategic line. Design: Evaluative research using qualitative techniques, including SWOT analysis on community health. Two-steps study. Location: Primary care teams (PCT) of the Catalan Health Institute in Barcelona city. Participants and/or context: The 24 PCT belonging to the Muntanya-Dreta Primary Care Service in Barcelona city, with 904 professionals serving 557,430 inhabitants. Method: Application of qualitative methodology using SWOT analysis in two steps (two-step study). Step 1: Setting up a core group consisting of local PCT professionals; collecting the community projects across the territory; SWOT analysis. Step 2: From the needs identified in the previous phase, a plan was developed, including a set of training activities in community health: basic, advanced, and a workshop to exchange experiences from the PCTs. Results: A total of 80 team professionals received specific training in the 4 workshops held, one of them an advanced level. Two workshops were held to exchange experiences with 165 representatives from the local teams, and 22 PCTs presenting their practices. In 2013, 6 out of 24 PCTs have had a community diagnosis performed. Conclusions: Community health has achieved a good level of development in some areas, but this is not the general situation in the health care system. Its progression depends on the management support they have, the local community dynamics, and the scope of the Primary Health Care. (C) 2016 Elsevier Espana, S.L.U. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).