Compreensão de adolescentes sobre saúde e as fontes de informação

Abstract

Introduction: Information is crucial for promoting health care, as it contributes to the empowerment of the community as well as the subject. At present, adolescents receive information from a variety of sources, raising questions about how they receive information about health care and what is their understanding of its concept. Objectives: To understand the teenagers - enrolled in the 9th grade of a Municipal School of Gurupi, Tocantins (TO), Brazil - perception of the health care and the sources that provide them information. Methodology: It is a descriptive exploratory research, and the approach is qualitative. Six (6) students, enrolled in the 9th grade of a Municipal School of Gurupi, TO, participated in the survey. Data were collected through an interview based on a semi-structured questionnaire. The method used for analyzing the data was the content analysis. Results and discussion: Adolescents' understanding of health care, expressed through their speech, refers to the biomedical model. The main sources of health care information they mentioned were their family, school, friends and the media, especially television and the internet. They claimed to know that not all the information available on the internet is true, but they do not have criteria for selecting sites that offer health care information. Adolescents rely on the professionals of the basic health care centers, but they do not clearly understand the information they receive about this subject. Most adolescents rated their own knowledge about health care as insufficient, but some also reported lack of continuous interest in the subject, since they only seek to know more about it only when they are ill. Overall, the interviewees stated that they needed to have more information about health care through informational materials and through actions in the school environment. Conclusions: It was observed that the understanding about the health care does not consider the multiple aspects that involve health care, having as reference the perspective of the Social Determinants of Health Care. Henceforth, there is a need for Health Care Education projects that involve the students in the development of actions addressed to this public, which can be developed in the school, in the Health Care School Program.