Health promotion in Brazil

ABSTRACT

Brazil, a Latin American country of continental proportions and contrasts, demographic inequalities, and social inequites, concomitantly faces the challenge of preventing and controlling, infectious diseases, injuries, and non-communicable diseases. The loss of stength of the biomedical paradigm, the change in epidemiological profile, and the sociopolitical and cultural challenges of recent decades have fostered emergence of new formulations about public health thinking and practice. Among them, are the paradigms of Brazilian Collective Health and Health Promotion. The fomer provides philosophical support for BrazilÆs Unified Health System (SUS). The aim of this article is to discuss the development of public health within the countryÆs history, and to analyse 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 Chasters and concerned with social actors and social determinants of the health-disease process, has significat potential to promote the improvementof 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 institucionalized by a ministerial decree. The importance and application of evaluating the effectiveness of health promotion processes and methodologies in Brazil heve been guided by various frame of reference, which we clarify in this article throught describing historical processes