The health-disease process and the family health strategy: the user's perspective

Objective: to analyze the meanings Primary Health Care users attribute to their health-disease process and the services used. Methods: this qualitative research uses the focus group technique to interview two groups of users the service monitors. The first is a group of elderly people and the second of pregnant women. To analyze the meanings, the discourse analysis technique and the reference framework of health promotion are used. Results: the group of elderly, being mostly female arterial hypertension and diabetes mellitus patients, visualizes the health-disease process as the evolution of human existence controlled by divine power, signifying the health service as a blessing in the control of the disease. The Group of young pregnant women signified health as the ability for self-care and disease as the disability for that purposes, considering the Primary Health Care service as responsible for the recovery of individual and family health. Final considerations: the users demonstrated dissatisfaction with bureaucratic and vertical relations present at the health services. In each group, it was observed that the meanings for health and disease and meanings of the health service the users elaborated can be related.