Interprofessionality in indigenous areas: enhancing and strengthening the role of health surveillance

Abstract

Indigenous Health Care in Brazil encompasses 391 peoples, with broad cultural diversity and structural and educational challenges for interprofessional work. This study aims to reflect on the obstacles, potentialities, and propositions for strengthening interprofessionality within the Indigenous Health Care Subsystem (SasiSUS). This is a critical-reflexive essay, grounded in the professional experience of the authors and in the literature pertinent to indigenous health and interprofessionality. We identified barriers such as insufficient numbers of qualified professionals, uniprofessional training, high staff turnover, care gaps, and the absence of specific protocols. We propose the strengthening of the health surveillance model, which includes the expanded clinical practice approach, the valorization of ongoing intercultural educational processes, and the co-constructed collaborative spaces between biomedical and indigenous knowledge systems. The integration and consolidation of an effective health surveillance model requires technical, cultural, and communicational competencies, shared therapeutic planning, and respect for diversity. Continuous educational processes – both face-to-face and distance based – can expand collaborative capacities and overcome fragmentation in care. Interprofessionality within SasiSUS depends on curricular changes, active methodological strategies, collaborative practices, and the urgent need to strengthen and sustain the model of territoriality and health surveillance, supported by ethics, interculturality, and co-responsibility, aiming at greater problem-solving capacity and quality of care.