Public Health Training Program for Health Workers on the Brazil-Uruguay Border

The main objective of the Public Health Training Program on the Brazil-Uruguay Border was to strengthen local training capacities in public health through the development of skills and competencies together with health workers from four border areas. The methodological design of the Program, based on workshops with the application of active methodologies in health training and mediated by educational technologies, favored the organization of a permanent dialogical setting between instructors, managers and practice professionals from both countries that, between 2017 and 2018, resulted in a) development of local capacities for the mapping of the main health surveillance problems in the four participating border areas; b) discussion of the limits and perspectives of action of the existing health services in both countries, within the principles and guidelines of the public health field; c) appropriation of pedagogical tools and processes that allowed for the incorporation of public health and health surveillance into the different organizational processes and settings of the local health sector; and d) building of a permanent capacity for the development of skills and competencies together with health workers, within a framework of permanent education in health. The Program's achievements and its contributions to local health services effectively qualify it as a strategic action for strengthening training and research capacities on the Brazil-Uruguay border.