Unidades Básicas de Saúde na cidade de Santos: uma experimentação em avaliação pós-ocupação e codesign

Abstract

Community Health Centers (CHC) are the main entrance for patients into the public healthcare system in Brazil and they offer a wide range of services for prevention, diagnosis, and health monitoring. CHC are designed to be references in low-density technology health services, with multidisciplinary teams of professionals to meet the population's specific health demands in a delimited territory within the municipality. In recent years, public policies have been implemented to develop Primary Care, to value and to include workers and users in health promotion actions, as well as incentives to adapt CHC physical facilities to contribute for the promotion in the quality of the "Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS)". Considering the importance of CHC and the central role of users in the development of an adequate architectural design, the aim of the research was to conduct a performance evaluation of two CHC in the city of Santos-SP. The evaluation process focused on the functional aspects of the buildings and user behavior, using methods and tools of Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) and Codesign that included the perception of the expert researcher and users in distinct stages of the research. The results indicate that there are still design and construction improvements are still to be made in order to satisfactorily meet the user's needs.These results have allowed the formulation of diagnoses and recommendations to enhance the quality of the evaluated built environments, which can serve as references for the development of new projects. In consideration of that, the aim is to encourage the involvement of various users in the decision-making process regarding the architectural design of CHC, including professionals from the facilities and patients, so that their suggestions can contribute to making these buildings more functional and suitable for their needs.