Training in mental health for more than 235 thousand community health workers, nurse assistants, and nurse technicians from 2013 to 2015 was evaluated in one of the final stages of the “Pathways to Care” project, supported by FIOTEC for more than four years. The preliminary results of “AvaliaCaminhos” (EvaluatePathways) were presented from August 29 to 31 at FIOCRUZ Brasília in a meeting with supervisors, articulators, teachers, and professionals that participated in the collaborative development of the methodology for evaluating the project’s learning process.

Adilson Gomes dos Santos, General Manager of FIOTEC, participated in the event as a member of the head table in the opening session, together with Marcelo Pedra, representative of the Department of Primary Care of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, Claudio Barreiros, representative of the MoH Mental Health Technical Area, Maria Cristina Guimarães, researcher and coordinator of the “Pathways to Care” project (ICICT/FIOCRUZ), and Lisiane Bôer Possa, professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) and representative of “EvaluatePathways”.

Adilson Gomes dos Santos highlighted the importance of the experience during the years FIOTEC has supported the “Pathways to Care” project: “We innovated and learned a great deal with this project. FIOTEC is a completely different institution since Pathways to Care. We were challenged, and we found solutions to the challenges. In nearly 20 years as an institution, this is the first project of this size we’ve had,” said Adilson.

Results

(Photo: Camila Cruz – Observatory of Care) “The EvaluatePathways Report in Brazil’s territory: methodology, evaluative framework, capillarity, and an approach to health assessment” was presented on the morning of August 29, the opening day of the event. The team in charge of developing the methodology explained all the stages in the project’s evaluation, launched in September 2015.

“We find that two issues were strategic in this evaluation: the collaboration and exchange between the specialization course and the evaluation process, in addition to participation by the Technical Schools of the Unified Health System (ETSUS), with articulators that were able to participate in the evaluation teams at the local level,” explained Frederico Machado, representative of “EvaluatePathways”. According to Frederico, the main challenge was to develop an evaluation in the same spirit as the “Pathways to Care” project, namely the production of strategies in Continuing Education.

Pathways to Care

Supported since 2013 by FIOTEC, the project involves a partnership between the Ministry of Health, the Institute of Scientific and Technological Communication and Information in Health (ICICT/FIOCRUZ), and the Conceição Hospital Group. It is one of the most important social initiatives in the health area, since it proposed to take face-to-face training to the farthest reaches of Brazil.

From 2013 to 2015, more than 235 thousand community health workers, nurse assistants, and nurse technicians in mental health (crack, alcohol, and other drugs) received face-to-face training to work in the Networks of Psychosocial Care spread all across Brazil. The project’s activities will officially come to a close in November this year.

With information from the story written by Camila Cruz, published on the page of “Observatory of Care”.