Promotion of black women's health in Castelo village, municipality of Alcântara, Maranhão, Brazil

Abstract

The Black Women's Health National Policy has a legal apparatus to support its implementation, conquered by the black movement. Taking as reference the laws relating to the black population's health, women's health, and the documents provided by the Health Secretariat of the Municipality of Alcantara, this study's main objective is to analyze the basic health services provided to black women of Castelo village, and its specific objectives are: to identify municipality of Alcantara's programs and projects facing black women; to check for any specific care for black women in Castelo village; to identify the main demands of the community's women to the local health service; to check how the color data are being collected by the local Family Health Strategy team. The methodology adopted consisted in to identify, through documents provided by the city's Health Secretariat, its actions and services towards the community's black women, and through a questionnaire applied to its professionals, their knowledge about the National Policy for Integral Health of the Black Population. We concluded that, despite the legal apparatus cited by the Health Secretariat's in its current health care plan, these legislation's achievements were not enough to improve the recognition of this social group's peculiarities among its health services. The collection of basic informations, which are necessary to the planning of specific actions, as the color data, is not being performed by the Municipality's Health Secretariat. We have not identified any planned action which considers the racial and ethnic characteristics of this village's women.