Collective resilience: A glance over the work on Primary Health Care

Abstract

Primary Health Care (PHC) was considered to be an important pillar to face the COVID-19 pandemic, which carried a series of stressful and traumatic factors that required adjustments to daily life. Being aware of the territory, of the access, of the bond linking the user to the team, of the assistance integrality, besides the follow-up of vulnerable families and cases became fundamental strategies. It was also required to stand up for problems resulting from the long-lasting social isolation and the precarious conditions of both social and economic lives, such as mental derangements, domestic violence, alcohol addiction and the sharpening or development of permanent conditions, with consequences that are hard to predict, and that require integral and longitudinal attention. The precarious social and economic conditions that affected part of the population, grounded on two social traumas – colonization and slavery –, which led to an extremely unequal development concerning income distribution and the fruition of social rights, became even sharpener during the pandemic, widening challenges concerning the health care. The potentialities and fragilities of life experiences following the COVID-19 makes it urgent to deepen what is known about collective resilience. This theoretic study discusses bibliographic references and offers a critical analysis of the concept, stressing its importance nowadays, besides applying it to Brazilian PHC context.