Health policies in Brazil have sought to expand healthcare access and mitigate inequities, but recent revisions of their content have weakened the Brazilian Unified Health System. This study estimates three healthcare indicators across three national surveys conducted in 2008, 2013, and 2019 to assess the impact of changes to the National Primary Care Policy on racial inequities in healthcare. Considering the survey design and sampling weights, we estimated the prevalence of each outcome among both whites and Blacks for the whole country, and according to the Brazilian regions. We test the following hypotheses: compared to whites, Blacks showed higher frequency of coverage by the Family Health Strategy, lower frequency of health insurance coverage, and higher frequency of perceived difficulty accessing health services (H1); Racial inequities decreased in the ten-year period but remained constant between 2013-2019 (H2); Racial gaps have widened among regions with lower proportions of Blacks (H3). Our findings fully support H1, but not H2 and H3. Racial inequities either remained constant or decreased in the 2013-2019 period. By downplaying the importance of the universality and equity principles, the latest revision of the National Primary Care Policy has contributed to the persistence of racial inequities in healthcare.

RESUMO Objetivo: Analisar a mortalidade infantil de indígenas e não indígenas nas microrregiões do Brasil. Método: Os dados são oriundos do Censo Demográfico 2010 e do Sistema de Informações sobre Mortalidade. Taxas e proporções caracterizaram a mortalidade infantil nas 558 microrregiões existentes em 2010. Resultados: No Brasil, crianças indígenas apresentaram elevados riscos de morrer antes de completarem um ano de idade (60% maior em relação às não indígenas), sendo mais expressivo nas microrregiões com população indígena inferior a 1%. A cada 10 óbitos infantis indígenas, sete eram crianças com mais de um mês de vida acometidas por doenças infecciosas. Conclusão: Os óbitos infantis indígenas são, de modo geral, evitáveis através da realização de intervenções no âmbito da Atenção Primária à Saúde. Há importantes diferenças nos níveis de mortalidade infantil entre indígenas e não indígenas, inclusive nos contextos geográficos onde se fazem presentes maiores contingentes de indígenas.

Resumo Estima-se um déficit de seis milhões de enfermeiros em todo o mundo. Apesar da importância para os sistemas de saúde, estudos sociodemográficos são escassos devido à ausência de dados sistematizados específicos para enfermeiros. O objetivo deste estudo foi comparar a cobertura populacional de enfermeiros no Brasil com base em fontes oriundas do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), nos anos de 2010 e 2015, e do Conselho Federal de Enfermagem (Cofen), nos anos de 2013 e 2019. Em ambas as fontes, houve um aumento médio de 164 mil enfermeiros em todo o Brasil. A taxa de crescimento para o período das pesquisas do IBGE (15,7% ao ano) foi o triplo daquela registrada nos dados do Cofen (5,3% ao ano). A cobertura nos estados do Brasil permanece aquém da recomendação internacional (40 enfermeiros a cada 10 mil habitantes), com maiores déficits nos estados das regiões Norte e Nordeste. As comparações deste estudo reiteram a importância da disponibilidade de dados padronizados e sistematizados para a Enfermagem no Brasil. Indicadores de saúde acurados subsidiam políticas públicas para a redução de iniquidades em saúde, com destaque para a cobertura de enfermeiros, especialmente em regiões de elevadas vulnerabilidades socioeconômicas.

Objectives: to identify how people with diabetes assess the care offered by Primary Care teams. Methods: a cross-sectional study based on structured interviews with the application of the Patient Assessment of Chronic Illness instrument to people with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Data were submitted to statistical analysis. Results: 451 individuals participated in the study, more than half aged 60 years or older (64.0%); 63.9% had been diagnosed for more than five years; and 23.9% used insulin. The average score obtained was 2.5, which indicated little involvement in self-care and low support for the care of the chronic condition by the Family Health Strategy team, and was higher among women and people with a partner. Conclusions: people with diabetes consider that they do not receive individualized treatment, with dialogue and discussion for setting goals, and that they are not prepared for self-managing their health condition.

Objectives: to analyze the socioeconomic characteristics of nurses and nursing technicians living in Brazil according to color/race. Methods: based on the 2010 Demographic Census sample, 62,451 nursing professionals (nurses and technicians) living in Brazil were selected. Differences in monthly income were estimated by multivariate models, stratified by color or race groups (white, brown, and black). Results: the majority were technicians (61.9%) of white color (54.3%). The income of white nurses exceeded that of brown and black nurses by more than a quarter; among technicians, white professionals had an income approximately 11% higher than brown and black nurses. Conclusions: differences between incomes of nursing workers were associated with ethnic/racial background, revealing situations in which white professionals systematically presented more favorable job and income conditions than black and brown professionals.

Objective: analyze income and work conditions of nurses in Brazil in 2000 and 2010. Methods: based on demographic census samples, socioeconomic characteristics of nurses were described according to income and work hours. Statistic models estimated the chances (odds ratios) of nurses having lower income despite working more than 40 hours per week. Results: the nurse population in Brazil grew at a rate of 12.5% per year. In the two study periods, approximately 11.0% of nurses received the lowest incomes and worked more than 40 hours per week. The most pronounced chances of belonging to this group were observed for those residing in the interior the South and Southeast regions of Brazil. They were also more elevated for nurses whose color/race was black or brown (pardo) and who lived with their parents. Conclusion and implications for the practice: the expressive increase in nurses occurred within the context of reduced socioeconomic inequalities. Less favorable work conditions were most evident for those classified as black and brown who lived in their parents’ homes. We argue that the scenarios described may be related to the expansion of university educational institutions during the first decade of the twenty-first century, among other aspects.