Family Health Strategy (Brazil)

A primary health care model created by Brazil's Ministry of Health in 1994 as the Family Health Program, and renamed the Family Health Strategy in 2006 to reflect its shift from a supplementary project to the organizing structure of primary care within Brazil's public Unified Health System (SUS). It organizes care around multidisciplinary family health teams, typically a physician, a nurse and several community health agents, each team responsible for a defined geographic population, with the community health agents visiting every household in their area on a regular schedule to track health needs, promote preventive care and immunization, and link families to the clinic. Studies published in journals including The Lancet have linked the strategy's expansion to significant reductions in infant mortality and to fewer hospitalizations for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular conditions in areas with higher program coverage, and it became one of the most widely studied community-based primary care models in the developing world, drawing policy visits and adaptations from other countries.