[African community empowerment approach to diagnosis in Health Care in two countries: Guinea Conakry and Congo Brazzaville].

Background: After immigration to France, the populations of Sub-Saharan Africa have often maintained their traditional lifestyles, this is why housing policies have been promoting their clustering in priority neighborhoods. Discussing issues about health promotion, requires to investigate health policies in their countries of origin.

Method: For this, we (i) organized brainstorming sessions with a group of 16 persons resident in France who were involved in a process of empowerment strengthening of community health programs in order to make them understood the incentives and the obstacles in health care in their countries of origin. We also (ii) collected literature data prior to undertake several trips to Guinea and Congo, in order to compare literature data with those of these countries.

Result: The result concerning health promotion in these countries allowed the identification of measures to be put in place. Among them, the facilitation of accessing to community health programs, basing on successful experiences, with the prospect of transferring them to France for migrants. These measures are based on the involvement of the institutional actors and of the populations in educational approaches to health behavior change.

Conclusion: "Territorial" diagnosis allows to emphasize the importance of the influence of health environment in the country of origin on subsequent behaviours. Moreover, it allows to highlight solutions that can promote harmonization of African community health in France.