Health promotion in Brazil

Abstract

Brazil, a Latin American country of continental proportions and contrasts, demographic inequalities, and social inequities, concomitantly faces the challenge of preventing and controlling infectious diseases, injuries, and non-communicable diseases. The loss of strength of the biomedical paradigm, the change in epidemiological profile, and the sociopolitical and cultural challenges of recent decades have fostered the emergence of new formulations about public health thinking and practice. Among them, are the paradigms of Brazilian Collective Health and Health Promotion. The former provides philosophical support for Brazil's Unified Health System (SUS). The aim of this article is to discuss the development of public health within the country's history, and to analyze and compare the theoretical assumptions of Health Promotion and Collective Health. We conclude that health promotion, based on the principles and values disseminated by the international Charters and concerned with social actors and social determinants of the health-disease process, has significant potential to promote the improvement of living and health conditions of the population. This frame of reference guided the formulation of the National Policy of Health Promotion within the Unified Health System, which was institutionalized by a ministerial decree. The importance and application of evaluating the effectiveness of health promotion processes and methodologies in Brazil have been guided by various frames of reference, which we clarify in this article through describing historical processes. (Promotion & Education, 2007, Supplement (1): pp 7-12)