[The primary healthcare centres]

The central attributes of primary care are: first contact (accessibility), longitudinality (person- focused preventive and curative care overtime), patient-oriented comprehensiveness and coordination (including navigation towards secondary and tertiary care). Besides taking care of the needs of the individuals, primary health care teams are also looking at the community, especially when addressing social determinants of health. The rationale for the benefits for primary care for health has been found in: 1) greater access to needed services; 2) better quality of care; 3) a greater focus on prevention; 4) early management of health problems; 5) organizing and delivering high quality care for chronic non-communicable diseases. This paper describes the role of primary healthcare centres in strengthening community primary services and in reducing health inequalities. Furthemore, the experiences of Regional Health Services from Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna are discussed, with a brief overview of the literature.