Abstract
Objective
Evaluate community health agents’ knowledge about visually impaired people before and after training on the topic.
Methods
Descriptive and longitudinal study, developed in three primary health care services in a city in the interior of Ceará, between December 2019 and May 2020. The participants were 13 community health agents who worked at these institutions. The data obtained by applying the questionnaire were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences and Epi-Info.
Results
most community health agents were women between 41 and 50 years of age (46.15%) and married (69.23%). More than half of the participants had only obtained a high school degree (61.54%), and the same number had taken a technical course for community health agents. As for their length of experience as community health agents, few had been working in this function for more than 20 years (38.46%) and about half worked in rural areas (53.85%). Learning was observed after the training, as the number of correct answers on common terms related to the topic increased, considering that the research participants began to understand the concepts of disabled people, inclusion and accessibility. It could be observed that none of the participants had been trained on the subject, showing the relevance of the training offered in this study.
Conclusion
After the training, an increase in the number of correct answers could be observed, as well as increased awareness about the importance of the topic, as there were people with disabilities in their activity areas.
Community health workers; Professional training; Visually impaired persons; Health promotion