The significance of territory in health policy has been approached from different disciplinary fields without developing a conceptual body of work to register the complexity of the problems that exist at that critical juncture.
This paper proposes to investigate the contribution that can be provided by a territorial approach to research and the practice of managers in primary health care, to throw light on the mutually conditioning relationship that exists in the two domains. This is a concept-based study that establishes links between the contributions from research on primary health care, the concepts provided by geography, and policy analysis.
This approximation reveals two standpoints from which policies can be analysed: on the one hand the concept of care as a stage in a correlation involving differing notions of territory, and on the other, recognition of the fact that at the moment of implementation in the territory a process of institutional recreation at local level occurs where differing regulatory logic is put into play and negotiated. Unequal living conditions, mobility processes, barriers to access, and the relationship between services are just some of the problems that stand out on the agenda of administrators.
Based on the challenges presented by the debate between these two approaches institutional and academic , the third section focuses on the need to conceptualise this relationship, to which end it tackles three areas of knowledge: studies on primary healthcare, geography and policy analysis. The conclusion summarises the contributions to analysis from this approach. To achieve this aim, it revises and problematizes categories generated in the context of different lines of research that approach the singularity present in the implementation processes of these policies in unequal territories.
In such lines of research, a qualitative methodology is adopted, which consists in the generation of substantive theory based on data obtained in empirical research proposing categories, defining its properties and establishing different relations among them Glaser y Strauss, It starts revising the tenets elaborated by international organizations in particular, by the Pan American Health Organization — PHO — and the World Health Organization — WHO to guide the policies in the sector; appealing to documentary sources official publications, recommendation documents, technical notes, meeting records and assembly declarations from both organizations.
