[Application of the negotiated process method to primary health care for women]

Since 1984 the University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago has been offering the course "Women's Health: A Primary Health Care Method." The objectives of the course are to develop a model to meet the health needs of urban women in industrialized countries and to teach post-graduate students from various health-related programs to work as members of interdisciplinary teams with groups of women in communities. This activity involves the use of the negotiated process method, the purpose of which is to train students and the community group to work together and separately on solutions to identified health problems. During the course given in 1985 this method was applied to analyzing the problem of battered women in a Latin American community. Although the results were satisfactory, other similar experiments should be conducted to determine its usefulness more precisely.