COMMUNITY APPROACH RATIONALITY

Keywords: Participation, Family Practice, Primary Health Care Introduction and objectives: Community Approach is a technique widely used by family physicians and Family Health Strategy teams in Brazil. It is executed by open dialogs and experience exchanges with the community members in order to the heath care team know the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of that community resulting in a better assessment. The understanding of the rationality implied in this relationship between community members and the health team and consequent professional interactions was the main objective of this research. Methods: content analysis of the interviews carried out by the residents’ association of the Morro Vital Brazil, in Niterói, RJ, and the Médico de Família de Niterói health team with local residents who lived there between the 1990 and 2000 decades. Results and conclusion: The community performance expresses the intentions of all those involved in a community. Analyzing the performance events helps the health team to understand the ideas that organize the community and how that is reflected in the coherence between the actions of the health team and the community response. The probability a behavior is repeated will guide the health team modus operandi. The “success” of an intervention will lie in its adequateness with the community performance. In other words, the Community Approach relies on the use of Weberian rationality to bring coherence to the interventions in the community.