Primary health care policies: investigation on morbidity

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the impact of primary health care policies on infant morbidity and mortality, by using as health indicators the number of infant hospitalizations and infant mortality rates, respectively, in Brazilian cities. Our sample comprises towns and cities in the South-East of the country, where there is some controversy about the impact of the Family Health Program on mortality for the 1999–2003 period. We found that the preventive health care model did achieve its goal of reducing hospitalizations and mortality rates in municipalities without hospitals, and to some extent, achieved its goal in municipalities with hospitals.

Keywords:

• primary care
• hospitalization
• mortality rate
• municipalities

JEL Classification:

• I10
• I18
• H77

Notes

¹ All rates by 1000 births, except hospitalizations by 10 000 children. All indicators are related to population residence location.

² The population coverage of these programmes, which originated these dummies, was obtained from DATASUS, a Ministry of Health database.