Between visibility and listening: access of the LGBTI+ population to primary healthcare

Abstract

Abstract This article aims to identify and analyze how health professionals working in primary care in the city of São Paulo undertand LGBTI+ people access to health. The research covered the six administrative regions of the city and this paper analyses in depth interviews with specialists of the administrative regions, and also with managers, physicians, nurses and nursing technicians/assistants in Basic Health Clinics trying to understand how they see the access of this segment of people into primary care. The access of LGBTI+ people to primary care tends to prioritize those visually recognizable and whose health demands can be understood in the frame of health centered on illness. This keeps many segments and health demands without attention. The results of the investigation point toward the need of switching the visual frame for a listening strategy to promote access of LGBTI+ people to integral health.