Contributions of Street Outreach teams to primary health care and management

Abstract

As part of the Unified Health System (SUS) in Brazil, a Street Outreach Program was created with the goals of delivering primary health care (PHC) and guaranteeing ac-cess to health initiatives for homeless populations in the street environment itself, connecting these populations to other services beyond urgent care and emergency facilit-ies. The Program’s scope of action involves, in addition to health care, protecting this population against the risks to which they are exposed combined with an effort to guarantee their rights. In this sense, the Street Outreach Clinics strive to ensure equity and access for people with no fixed address, within a system that essentially relies on geographical catchment areas to provide health care. Thus, the establishment of Street Outreach Clinics has introduced new modes of providing health care, and consequently new modes of managing work processes. Based on this articulation between care and management, the present article discusses three levels of intervention for the work of Street Outreach Clinics and teams (the street itself, the health care unit, and institutional networks), as well as the relationship between this Program and other PHC services and its contribution to reconciling PHC with its essential attributes, beyond catchment areas.