A FORMULA FOR MEN’S PRESENCE WITHIN PRIMARY HEALTH CARE SERVICES

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Men are commonly identified by health professionals as absent of health services, unaware of its codes, impatient, objective, demanders of healing, disease-focused actions and less adherent. The existence of a stereotypical model of gender leads to the reproduction of inequalities in health care between men and women, strengthens the invisibility of men on health services and represents an institutional vulnerability factor for male population. This work is part of a larger research that addresses the relationship between men and Primary Health Care (PHC) services. Here, we seek to understand facilitators and complicators of men’s presence within these services. METHODOLOGY: Our qualitative research involved semi-structured interviews with 16 male and female doctors and 15 male users of Family Health Strategy in São Paulo and Mauá, as well as the observation of the five participating services. Analysis was made under the frameworks of gender and masculinities, and the notions of vulnerability, comprehensiveness and quaternary prevention. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: We could outline a "formula for men’s presence within PHC services", which includes a trigger condition (complaint or symptom relatable to work or chronic disease), an enabling condition (loss of health insurance, unemployment, retirement and/or female intercession), and the maintaining condition of feeling cared – even if it requires submission to the disciplinary control from the service. This formulation does not exhaust the characteristics that lead men to attend PHC services, but it can help lessen their invisibility, promote comprehensiveness in their care and reduce institutional vulnerability.