Andrea de Oliveira Gonçalves
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Rodrigo de Souza Gonçalves
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Elionor Farah Jreige Weffort
This paper analyses the relationship between the so-called participative communities and their participants’ influence on local public health policies discussions through health councils in the cities of Porto Alegre, Brazil and Montevideo, Uruguay. Work was carried out through a qualitative comparison research (Sartori e Morlino, 1994), opting for a multiple-case study (Yin, 2003) and by using Likert (1967), Rifkin et al. (1989), and Demo (1996) as main theoretical references. Results achieved by the content analysis showed that the Health Council of Porto Alegre tends to present a larger level of community participation, i.e., the organization having an influence on local health policy discussions. As to the Health Council of Montevideo, the level of participation tends to be limited, i.e., the organization has little influence on local health policy discussions.
The Role of Community-Based Participatory Research to Inform Local Health Policy: A Case Study