Abstract
This article analyzes the significance that health professionals attribute to health education groups for people with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). This ethnographic study was developed with five professionals from an Expanded Family Health team that operated in five diabetes health education groups. Information was gathered using participant observations and semi-structured interviews. Data were analyzed by means of a thematic coding technique. Three different categories emerged: (1) It is a way of educating them: groups as an educational and clinical monitoring forum; (2) they know I will be there for them: the groups as a resource to access the health system; and (3) this serves as a self-help group: after all, what purpose does this group serve? The conclusion reached is that the groups studied were a therapy and support hybrid that, by means of their structure, made it possible for the informants (perhaps, also for the patients) to construct other significance for the standardization of health policies and the dilemma of chronicity. Such hybridization made it possible to create outcomes for the specificities of health work in a "total life" context.
Highlights
Health education groups, involved in primary healthcare, for those who live with long-term diseases, form social-cultural universes including elements and arrangements that are not as yet fully included under the Cartesian paradigm of health sciences
The focus of this study is based on the significance given by health professionals to the provision of health care within these groups, as well as social-cultural aspects that shape the nature and type of the health care provided within these scenarios
Given the vast panorama of chronic diseases, this article will concentrate on Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM)
Summary
Health education groups, involved in primary healthcare, for those who live with long-term diseases (known as “chronic diseases” in biomedical terms), form social-cultural universes including elements and arrangements that are not as yet fully included under the Cartesian paradigm of health sciences. The research study that led to this article was conducted in Campinas, in the interior of São Paulo, between August 2011 and September 2012, in five health education groups for people with “high blood pressure” and T2DM (Hiperdia Groups) by professionals working with Family Health Teams (FHT) from the “São Marcos Region” health center. This region covers several districts and ‘subnormal’ agglomerates and, even though this term does not officially exist, it is used by the population to delimit and describe a territory covered by the FHT and which I visited several times during the course of my field work.
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