Unpacking participation in healthcare governance: Lessons from two local health councils in Brazil and Spain

This paper describes and compares the integration of cross‐sector actors' participation into the governance of two local health councils, one located in Salvador de Bahia (Brazil) and the other in the Canary Islands (Spain). Based on the cross‐national comparative research conducted as part of a doctoral thesis, a qualitative design based on secondary data analysis was proposed on the three stages of the organisational integration process of participation. We used information from individual semi‐structured interviews (n = 70), situational observation, focus groups, literature review, and field notes to understand participatory processes of networking between multiple cross‐sector actors and to show how such processes might be associated with innovative practices. For these innovations to be successfully implemented, stakeholders need to acquire adequate competencies in cross‐sector collaboration, enabling them to learn about new organisational practices and to adapt the network of actors to the often unpredictable influences of contextual factors.