Saúde da população negra durante o enfrentamento à Covid-19: percepção dos atores da estratégia saúde da família (ESF)

Abstract

The sanitarian and humanitarian crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic was a major contemporary challenge. The Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) are related to the conditions in which people are born, live and die, with related factors being the “social, economic, cultural, ethnic/racial, psychological and behavioral aspects that influence the occurrence of health problems and its risk factors in the population”. The lack of studies and debates about aspects of the health of the black population masks the situations experienced by these subjects, resulting in the erasure of their stories and their way of living. The objective of the research was to understand the perception of the actors of the Family Health Strategy (FHS) on the health of the black population during the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Granja Lisboa neighborhood (Fortaleza - CE), in light of the model of Social Determinants of Health proposed by Solar and Irwin. The study was accomplished in the Granja Lisboa neighborhood, which is the populated territory with the highest proportion of black people living in the city. Based on exploratory visits, interviews and focus groups, we constructed the analyzes of the SDOH of the Granja Lisboa territory, divided into intermediate and structural SDOH. We performed the content analysis in the thematic modality following the following steps: pre-analysis; categorization and exploration; and interpretation of categories. The results of the study demonstrate that the perceived intermediate SDOH were: difficulty accessing healthy foods; worsening food insecurity; increase in families in extreme poverty and people begging; increase in unemployment; reduction in family income; difficulty in achieving social isolation in inadequate housing; maintenance of the state of public insecurity and armed violence in the territory. And the structural SDOH highlighted were: intersectionality of gender, class and racial oppression and weaknesses in social and governance policies. We conclude that the territory of Granja Lisboa is submerged in the process of residential racial segregation and peripheralization, requiring immediate public actions, with the implantation and implementation of policies that make effective their coexistence and overcoming inequities.