Part 1--unravelling primary health care conceptual predicaments through the lenses of complexity and political economy: a position paper for progressive transformation.

OBJECTIVE: To disentangle the concepts of primary health care and primary care as well as their conceptual and empirical ramifications for progressive transformation.
METHODS: over 400 international and interdisciplinary abstracts and papers with 96 annotated bibliography abstracts of literature across multiple dimensions relating to the knowledge base around mechanisms in PHC development were reviewed. The text is confronted with the reality, as it exists in the field and makes the case for complexity perspectives to assess this phenomenon in its context.
CONCLUSION: PHC complexity is an important analytical tool to interrogate the ways in which this phenomenon is socially constructed as well as in the matrices in which it is embedded. It is also a potent analytical tool to assist in the deconstruction of prevalent linear thinking built around PHC as a whole.