Integrating primary care and public health: learning from the Brazilian way

After a long history of vertical programming, specialisation and disintegration, general practitioners are now being urged to take on wider commissioning and public health responsibilities. The support structures are not in place, and integration of primary care with good public health practice is new territory. Innovation can be found in unlikely places. The Brazilian government has a 20-year history of a nationwide, integrated, comprehensive, community health programme that seamlessly bridges two important interfaces - between the community and primary care, and between primary care and public health. Some elements of this approach could be translated into the UK and would likely bring about improved clinical care, cost savings, improved understanding of local epidemiological variations and therefore commissioning. Understanding this approach is the first step to a new way of integrated commissioning, spanning and not reinforcing traditional clinical domains.