Educação em saúde com gestantes: revisão de escopo, letramento em saúde e educação com pares

Abstract

Health education in maternal and child health: the methodological perspectives, health literacy and a peer education To identify educational methodologies used in maternal-child health, to evaluate health literacy of low-income pregnant women and to develop a method of health education performed by peers for pregnant women. Three research steps were carried out. The first was a Scoping Review to assess the volume and scope of studies published in scientific literature regarding maternal-child health education methods. The research question was constituted comprising as population the pregnant women, as concept the health education and as context the Primary Health Care. PubMed, SciELO, Web of Science and LILACS were used to search the studies. The second stage was crosssectional observational to identify the level of health literacy of pregnant women of Brazilian Allowance Program and attended by the municipal network of Primary Health Care of Uberlândia (Minas Gerais). The overall score and structural factors of health literacy of pregnant women was measured using the Health Literacy Assessment Tool. The third stage was the evaluation of a proposal for peer health education. For this evaluation, the Health Literacy Assessment Tool was applied to the pregnant women at the beginning of the educational actions and six months after the birth of the children. In addition, semi-structured interviews were carried out with the promoters of the educational activities to verify the difficulties and potentialities of the proposal. It was possible to identify the social networks of pregnant women (especially mothers) and that participation in educational activities was associated with a higher health literacy score. For the development of educational activities, health professionals can use different pedagogical approaches, and there is still no scientific evidence of the best approach. The pregnant women who participated in the educational proposal had higher values in the structural factors of health literacy after participating in the educational activities. The proposal proved to be viable, bringing results to the pregnant women and to the promoter mothers, but for its continuity it is important to consider the need to include, preferably, pregnant women whose social support is not consolidated and to create spaces for the exchange of experiences among mothers the implementation of educational actions.The three steps developed allowed a deepening of maternal-child health education, pointing to the possibility of developing different methodological approaches, reinforcing the importance of educational activities during pregnancy and indicating the feasibility of implementing health education strategies by peers. Keywords: Health education. Primary health care. Maternal-child care.