Autopercepção da saúde por usuários das Unidades Básicas de Saúde de Belo Horizonte, MG, Brasil

Abstract

Introduction: Health is a complex definition and includes not only the absence of disease. The self-perceived health evaluates the health’s condition, quality of life, morbidity and function decreasing, mostly analyzed by the individual and serving as mortality’s predictor. For the National Public Health System, the Primary Care provides professionals and population attachment, promotion, prevention, early diagnosis, behavior changing, supporting, leading to suitable resources. Objective: To evaluate the self-perceived health among Basic Health Units users of Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil. Method: A cross-sectional survey, based on part of health perception from the “Health Promotion Program and Violence Prevention in Primary Care” project. The self-rated health was analyzed by the question “how do you rate your health?”, considering selected variables and then it was performed univariate analyzes, bivariate, logistic regression and characterized scenarios projection. Results: From 1125 users, the univariate analyzes revealed the majority were female, aged between 35 to 44 years, were married/consensual marriage/cohabitation, owned a high school degree, with family income between one to three times minimum wage, related to be performing a remunerated activity, with no alcoholic beverage consumption. The positive self-perceived health was reported by 60.9%. There was statistically significant relationship on bivariate analyzes between those individuals who related positive self-perceived health and explanatory variables, which greater proportion of each one were: up to 24 years old, married/consensual marriage/cohabitation, at university level/post graduate, with family income at least four times minimum wage, performing a remunerated activity, felt comfortable to talk to relatives, felt comfortable to talk to friends, did not have conditions, frequently looked after for their own health, looked for medical care for the last time in the past six to twelve months, rarely felt body ache, rarely felt headache or migraine, did not have any relative murdered, did not suffer psychological/moral aggression. The logistic regression model demonstrated that the positive self-perceived odds increased on: 44.3% if the person was married or on consensual marriage to somebody, 95.3% if studied at least the high school, 269.3% if did not have any condition, 94.7% if did not feel body pain, 51.2% if did not feel headache. And this model decreased by 50.2% if they did not take care about their own health and 31.8% if they looked for a medical appointment for less than six months. The characterized scenarios exhibited a variety of results depending on combination of variables, each one impacting in a different way. Final considerations: The results confirmed that the self-perceived health is broad. It is not only about individual and private aspects, but it links to resources and social scope, deserving to be included in social policies. Although violence was not related to positive self-rated health, it must be included in new investigations about this subject due to its magnitude.