Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

The study analyzed how sex education is provided to adolescents and young people from the perspective of the intersectoriality of health and education. The pedagogical and methodological characteristics used by teachers and professionals of the Family Health Strategy of a municipality in southern western Amazônia were surveyed, as were the perspectives of intersecting the school with health services for sex education. The survey was conducted between May and September 2013. A qualitative approach was used. After a semi-structured interview, content analysis was used to survey the thematic categories. Sex education was characterized by specific activities motivated by demand. The family was considered the main element responsible for sex education, and a lack of professional preparedness proved to be an important factor for this type of education not being provided. The intersectoral perspectives pointed out by the participants were limited to the actions already existing in practice, such as lectures and projects, among others. Intersectoriality for sex education seems to transit in the field of ideas, tied to the discourses. Although government initiatives encourage it, these perspectives have failed to account for the complexity involved in its legitimation. New strategies must be discussed for sex education.

With the instrumentalization of the health policy, planning, and management area, the public health physicians’ political ethos has been being put into question in their training. Thus, we aimed to characterize the curricular components related to this area in undergraduate courses in collective health in Brazil. In June 2014, a secondary data survey of the curricular matrices was carried out on the Ministry of Education’s website, the unit of analysis of which was the curricular component, using the reference term for undergraduate courses in collective health as a parameter. The courses present ‘collective health’ as the main denomination (60%). Most of the courses are spread in the Northern and Southeastern regions (27%) and in public institutions (93%). On the contents in the nomenclatures, ‘health planning’ is the most cited (up to seven times in the same matrix) and in 60 percent of the total courses; 87 percent of the courses do not feature the term ‘Unified Health System’ as a component name. It was concluded that without a curricular standardization future public health physicians will have different profiles, acting in a more specific perspective leaning towards a more planning management format and with gaps regarding the political contents and the ideological defense of the Unified Health System.

The incredible growth in the number of Physical Therapy schools in Brazil needs to be analyzed. There was a 476 percent increase in the number of courses located in major cities and in private educational institutions between 1995 and 2008. Aiming to analyze the distribution of Physical Therapy schools in the different Brazilian regions, identifying the institutions offering presence and distance education, a quantitative, exploratory, and cross-sectional study was carried out based on secondary data collected from the e-MEC site in 2015. The number of openings and school distribution were listed based on population estimates. Physiotherapy courses are concentrated in large cities, making it difficult for the population in the interior to have access to them. The highest concentration is in the states of São Paulo (239 courses), Minas Gerais (152 courses), and Paraná (120 courses), where most professionals are also located. Course distribution analysis identified the need to invest in opening courses in Northern Brazil. The unbridled growth of Physical Therapy schools, coupled with the lack of criteria for opening new courses in the country, reiterates inequalities in the distribution of professionals.

The study aimed to describe how the health conditionants and determinants topic was covered in the national and state health plans drafted for the period ranging from 2012 to 2015. It was a qualitative, documentary analysis-type study focusing on the health conditionants and determinants topic. These documents were queried on the websites of the Ministry of Health and of the state health departments of the 27 Brazilian states. Research was also carried out in the Management Report Construction Support System, on Google, and by e-mail. It was noted that the health conditionants and determinants issue is not present in Brazilian health plans. Most of the documents used the health planning framework in a normative perspective, as proposed in the Ministry of Health’s technical documents. The discussion on health conditionant and determinant models was not featured among the documents that were analyzed, and there was a mixed description of the topic through disaggregated data and composite indices. The study indicated the need for more attention and review of the health conditionant and determinant models used to prepare these technical documents.

The study that gave rise to this article was a qualitative, exploratory-descriptive one aimed at analyzing how nursing graduates experience competitiveness. Data collection took place between March and May 2015. The subjects were twenty undergraduate nursing students from two colleges in Maceió, state of Alagoas, Brazil. A semi-structured interview was used to collect the information and undertake the thematic analysis. The theoretical framework used to analyze the data came from Caniato and Rodrigues’ views on competition, which has its theoretical and philosophical base Freudian psychoanalysis and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, especially that of Adorno and Horkheimer. It was noted that competitiveness is part of the students’ experience because it is considered an inherent characteristic of the human being, who, naturally, lives with it in the capitalist system. This competitive behavior might increase in undergraduate studies, according to the environment, to one’s personality/nature, and to the situations experienced. It was noted there is conflict, since the students considered competitiveness as a necessity in view of the labor ‘market,’ but saw it as a more negative characteristic.

The overall objective of the study was to investigate limits and possibilities of problem-based learning in the training of the physiotherapist. The study is characterized as qualitative research, and data were collected through interviews and questionnaires conducted with teachers and students of a physical therapy course, in addition to classroom observations. The data were analyzed based on content analysis. The three thematic blocks defined in advance addressed the health-disease process conception, perception, and focus of the curriculum. Finally, we indicate the perception of the health-disease process, the lack of theoretical bases, of student participation, the difference in personalities, and individualized study as limits in the physiotherapist’s training. The potentialities pointed out relate to good communication, joint work promoting professional skills, mutual help, and discussion of subjects, such as content integration, and independent studies. This study showed signs that in the training investigated there are more limits than possibilities regarding forming a more critical, reflective, and humanistic professional. We also recognize the possibility of Problem-Based Learning as pedagogical practice in favor of a more humane and critical training.

Trabalho e saúde no capitalismo contemporâneo: enfermagem em foco. Helton Saragor de Souza e Áquilas Mendes (orgs.). Rio de Janeiro: DOC Content, 2016, 116 p.

The decentralization of health, epidemiological, and environmental surveillance at municipalities was driven by organizational changes and changes made to federal funding, and the idea of not only integrating them, but also blending them with individual and collective care, gained momentum. Many health departments’ organization charts brought the different surveillances together under a common coordination, and managers demanded new professionals be trained to meet the needs of this arrangement. This article aims to outline the profile of the middle-level professionals at the surveillances at six municipalities in the state of Alagoas, Brazil, and services they provide, adding the views of the managers about the practices of these workers, who account for 88 percent of the surveillance workforces in these municipalities. With no specific training to carry their activities out, it was noted that the less time the manager had been holding his or her position, the poorer the employees performed. The main difficulties highlighted were political interference in the health and environmental monitoring work; poor filling in of the epidemiological investigation forms by the family health teams in the six municipalities, in addition to these professionals’ undefined roles in worker health surveillance. The required technical training is insufficient to overcome these difficulties, a fact that demands a revision of the teams’ labor management and coordination processes to ensure more effective practices.

This article is the outcome of a research project carried out aiming to analyze the institutionalization of the work of community health agents in the city of Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, by evaluating how a gender perspective present in these workers' qualification policy has affected how the profession is formed. A total of 167 agents took part of the study between 2011 and 2013. First, the gender perspective present in this State's policies directed to the agents is presented. The work experience of these workers in the implementation of the Family Health Program in the city and its relation to the skills seen as innate to the female condition are analyzed, followed by an investigation of how the primary care reform undertaken by the Municipal Health and Civil Defense Department in 2009 has affected the agents' work process. It was found that with the new types of management adopted, the agents have been distancing themselves from the communities they serve, thus losing the unique features that gave meaning and brought recognition to their work.

The COVID-19 pandemic context is related to the interaction of human beings with the environment, as we invade and destroy important ecological niches, creating unsustainable models of animal production and trade. Washing your hands is one of the most effective actions to prevent COVID-19. But how tofollow this procedure where water is not guaranteed as often as necessary? Another important aspect of surveillance is chronic exposure to air contamination, favoring high mortality rates from COVID-19. The populations of the countryside, the forest and the waters are also one of the most vulnerable groups and, at the same time, have ways of life that are decisive for the socio-environmental sustainability of the planet. Crisis offices, popular committees, solidarity articulations, platforms, academic-popular observatories, popular health barriers, internet portals for participatory monitoring are some of the ways that, spontaneously, have emerged in the favelas and in the territories of traditional peoples to cope with facing COVID-19, given the absence of effective policies, mainly at the federal level. We have to create methods, strategies and initiatives that enable health and environmental surveillance to contribute to solving problems and needs in a horizontal, participatory, democratic and scientifically qualified way.