AVASUS’ Contributions to Promoting Lifelong Learning in Health: Toward Achieving the SDGs and Strengthening Global Health Security

The Virtual Learning Environment of the Brazilian Health System (AVASUS) was developed by the Laboratory for Technological Innovation in Health (LAIS) and the Secretariat of Distance Education (SEDIS) at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN) in partnership with Brazil’s Ministry of Health (MoH). AVASUS provides open educational resources in the health field and has emerged as the third largest platform for massive health education globally, with more than one million students. Among the various learning pathways AVASUS offers, some specifically focus on meeting the educational needs to address public health emergencies and overlooked health contexts. The main argument in this study is that technology-mediated lifelong learning in health is an effective strategy for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the 2030 Agenda. This chapter analyzes the pathways related to COVID-19, syphilis, and prison health, focusing on the contributions towards achieving SDGs 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 16, and 17 and fulfilling the Global Health Security Agenda. Our analysis revealed two key findings. Lifelong learning in health (i) prompts decision-making on public health policies and (ii) contributes towards implementing the SDGs. Ultimately, AVASUS should be recognized as a tool to improve health services and support policy-making

Interventions of Brazil's more doctors program through continuing education for Primary Health Care

IntroductionBrazil's More Doctors Program, in its training axis, aims to improve medical training for Primary Health Care through interventions related to the reality of the territory. The research presented here analyzed the interventions implemented by Brazil's More Doctors Program physicians, members of the Family Health Continuing Education Program, and the relationship with Primary Health Care programmatic actions.MethodologyThe research conducted made use of Text and Data Mining and content analysis. In total, 2,159 reports of interventions from 942 final papers were analyzed. The analysis process was composed of the formation of the corpus; exploration of the materials through text mining; and analysis of the results by inference and interpretation.ResultsIt was observed that 57% of the physicians worked in the Northeast Region, which was also the region with the most interventions (66.8%). From the analysis of the bigrams, trigrams, and quadrigrams, four constructs were formed: “women's health,” “child health,” “chronic non-communicable diseases,” and “mental health.” Terms related to improving access, quality of care, teamwork, and reception were also present among the N-grams.DiscussionThe interventions carried out are under the programmatic actions recommended by the Brazilian Ministry of Health for Primary Health Care, also addressing cross-cutting aspects such as Reception, Teamwork, Access Improvement, and Quality of Care, which suggests that the training experience in the Family Health Continuing Education Program reflects on the way these professionals act

Evaluation of massive education in prison health: a perspective of health care for the person deprived of freedom in Brazil

Education, with an emphasis on prison health, has acted as a policy inducing changes in work processes, which the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) has used, and which is present in permanent health education, which promotes health care for people deprived of liberty. This article aims to present an analysis of the impacts of the strategy of massive education on prison health in Brazil from the perspective of health professionals and other actors operating in the Brazilian prison system. The data used in the study come from a questionnaire consisting of 37 questions applied nationwide between March and June 2022. Responses were collected from students who completed the course “Health Care for People Deprived of Freedom” of the learning pathway “Prison System”, available in the Virtual Learning Environment of the Brazilian Health System (AVASUS). This course was offered nationally, whose adhesion (enrollment) occurred spontaneously, i.e., the course was not a mandatory. The data collected allowed us to analyze the impacts of massive education on prison health. The study also shows that the search for the course is made by several areas of knowledge, with a higher incidence in the health area, but also in other areas, such as humanities, which also work directly with the guarantee of the rights of people deprived of liberty, which are professionals in the areas of social work, psychology, and education. The analysis based on the data suggests that the massive education mediated by technology through the courses of the learning pathway, besides disseminating knowledge–following the action plan of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)–, are an effective tool to promote resilience in response to prison health and care demands of people deprived of liberty

The relevancy of massive health education in the Brazilian prison system: The course "health care for people deprived of freedom" and its impacts

Brazil has one of the largest prison populations globally, with over 682,000 imprisoned people. Prison health is a public health emergency as it presents increasingly aggravating disease rates, mainly sexually transmitted infections (STI). And this problem already affects both developed and developing nations. Therefore, when thinking about intervention strategies to improve this scenario in Brazil, the course "Health Care for People Deprived of Freedom" (ASPPL), aimed at prison health, was developed. This course was implemented in the Virtual Learning Environment of the Brazilian Health System (AVASUS). Given this context, this study analyzed the aspects associated with massive training through technological mediation and its impacts on prison health

Evaluation of massive education in prison health: a perspective of health care for the person deprived of freedom in Brazil

Education, with an emphasis on prison health, has acted as a policy inducing changes in work processes, which the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) has used, and which is present in permanent health education, which promotes health care for people deprived of liberty. This article aims to present an analysis of the impacts of the strategy of massive education on prison health in Brazil from the perspective of health professionals and other actors operating in the Brazilian prison system. The data used in the study come from a questionnaire consisting of 37 questions applied nationwide between March and June 2022. Responses were collected from students who completed the course "Health Care for People Deprived of Freedom" of the learning pathway "Prison System", available in the Virtual Learning Environment of the Brazilian Health System (AVASUS). This course was offered nationally, whose adhesion (enrollment) occurred spontaneously, i.e., the course was not a mandatory. The data collected allowed us to analyze the impacts of massive education on prison health. The study also shows that the search for the course is made by several areas of knowledge, with a higher incidence in the health area, but also in other areas, such as humanities, which also work directly with the guarantee of the rights of people deprived of liberty, which are professionals in the areas of social work, psychology, and education. The analysis based on the data suggests that the massive education mediated by technology through the courses of the learning pathway, besides disseminating knowledge-following the action plan of the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-, are an effective tool to promote resilience in response to prison health and care demands of people deprived of liberty