Participatory mapping applied to the Family Health Strategy: the experience in Santo Amaro - BA - Brazil

Abstract

The access to geolocation on smartphones and tablets has pointed to its potential use in the survey of georeferenced data and as a mapping method replicable by non-specialist users. The objective of this article is to present the experience of the participatory mapping on the action territories of the Family Health Strategy (ESF) teams in the municipality of Santo Amaro (BA) with GPS/GNSS (Global Positioning System / Global Navigation Satellite System) resources and Google Earth satellite image, in the Map Marker application. In this work, aspects of the perception and transcription of spatial elements in the process of digitalization and cartographic updating of these territories are presented. Workshops were held in the 17 Basic Health Units (UBS) in order to map the territories of operation – micro-areas – of the 104 Community Health Agents (CHA). In this work, it’s presented aspects of perception and transcription in the process of digitalization and cartographic updating. Of the 17 UBS, 10 had some cartographic product. These pre-existing products contributed to the spatial correspondence between the territory and the satellite images. The identification of the micro-areas was satisfactory, however, the biggest challenge was to vectorize the polygonal. Despite that, in each team there was at least one professional who stood out and was able to reproduce the methodology without a mediator. The use of geospatial technologies applied to health mapping proved to be viable for the study area, and reinforces the importance of training for the autonomy of social actors and the democratization of these resources in public health strategies. Obtaining these cartographic bases should support the spatialization of diseases registered in primary care as well as the municipality's health management.