Imagining the work of community health workers: notes for a discussion on territory, health and care

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to present reflections on the territory-health-care triad, starting from the practice of community health agents as a context that allows us to visualize the complexity of this relationship. It is a theoretical-reflexive essay produced through the integration of knowledge from social anthropology and health sciences. In this sense, we highlight three reflective sessions whose notes propose: firstly, discussing territory and territorialization in the context of the technicalbureaucratic practices of the Unified Health System (SUS); secondly, discussing the relationship between care and medicalization, seeking to critically analyze the health-illness-care process in correlation with the territory; and finally, discussing the potential of community health agents in managing sociocultural meanings and representations in the care provided by primary health units. We emphasize that even the use of sociocultural concepts of territory requires recognition of the inherently dynamic nature of territorialization practices, and that care, equally, should be understood as a way of producing and signifying relationships in the world that are not exclusively related to health.