Intersectoral actions and the recognition of a source of primary care for Brazilian adolescents

This study aimed to analyze the association between the development of intersectoral actions between school/primary health care (PHC) services and the recognition of a usual source of care of PHC among Brazilian adolescents. This is a crosssectional study, from the Brazilian National Survey of School Health (2015) conducted with a complex sampling of 97,903 adolescents. The association between intersectoral actions between PHC services and schools and the recognition of a usual source of care of PHC were estimated by the prevalence ratio (PR), using the logistic regression model and considering the sample weight factor with Stata 14.0. Of the analyzed adolescents, 72.8% of them studied in schools that developed intersectoral actions with PHC services. Among adolescent students from schools that developed intersectoral actions, an association was observed between the recognition of usual source of care of PHC and intersectoral actions (PR = 1.11; 95%CI: 1.08-1.14). When analyzed for actions of the School Health Program (PR = 1.40; 95%CI: 1.371.43), and the development of actions between the school and PHC services (PR = 1.08; 95%CI: 1.051.12). The results show that there is a positive association between the recognition of PHC services as a usual source of care and intersectoral actions. However, from the perspective of an intersectoral practice, there are challenges in the articulation between health and education sectors for implementing prevention and promoting adolescent health in school. They involve greater knowledge about the adolescents' perception of the quality of the service offered by health units.