Information and knowledge flows in the network of the education through work for family health program

Abstract

The Education through Work for Family Health Program (PET Saúde, in Portuguese) created by the Ministries of Education and Health is a proposal to integrate service, learning and community. The goal of PET Saúde is to foster the formation of learning groups within the Family Health Strategy scope. While being studied at the city of Feira de Santana, the program was structured with one coordinator and eleven tutorial groups, distributed in 27 family health offices, which constituted a social network where the construction and knowledge diffusion occur. This article proposes the analysis of the information and knowledge flows of this network through the social networks analysis. This study highlights the play of PET Saúde’s coordinator in the processes of organization and articulation as central vertex of the network, and some scholars in the articulation of different tutorial groups. The results show a fragmentation in the PET Saúde network when the coordinator vertex is removed, whereas 5 components are generated where 4 tutorial groups appear isolated.