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

The concept of childhood has changed according to the economic and power structures of society, as well as the values that influence the care of children and adolescents. With neoliberalism, constitutional rights were reduced, the values defended in the Constitution were devalued and Civil Society Organizations became responsible for the care of this population. This study, carried out in 2018, aimed to analyze how values and professional training influence health promotion in the care of children and adolescents in a Civil Society Organization in the city of Florianópolis, Brazil. The research used a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis. The results were organized into two categories: Professional training: overcoming technicality in search of health promotion; and Moral education, values and citizenship: health promotion against neoliberal values. It is essential to discuss professional training in search of more humanized care at the university in order to promote critical individuals with the capacity to reflect, transform and recreate their work. In addition, moral education and health promotion seek elements to transform the status quo that goes beyond medical practices and encompasses the promotion of a culture of peace and human rights and the emancipation of human beings.

Tuberculosis, a global problem related to the population’s living conditions, is a historically complex problem. In recent years, social mobilization has become a fundamental component of disease surveillance. In this article, the concepts of social mobilization for tuberculosis surveillance and control, present in the National Tuberculosis Control Program (2006), in the Strategic Plan for Tuberculosis Control (2007-2015), are critically analyzed in the document description of the implementation of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis Program in Brazil and in six Brazilian scientific productions, from 2007 to 2016, that address the theme. Specifically, the study aims to understand these concepts, as well as discuss the relationships between them. All were examined through content analysis. Although favorable to social mobilization, the texts refer to some theoretical and epistemological contradictions. Social mobilization is presented according to a functionalist and utilitarist conception (positivist paradigm of science), with regulatory rather than emancipatory intent. It seems to be a social mobilization in the service of the domestication of society, which disregards the life experiences of the population and the complex structure of production and social reproduction of the disease.

The study aims to discuss living conditions and emancipatory health promotion based on descriptive evidence from the reports of the Pastoral Land Commission, references on the struggle for access to land in southeastern Pará (Northern Brazil), led by landless migrants and articulated with the peasant movement. As a result, the question arose: to what extent did access to land promote improvements in the living conditions of landless migrants in southeastern Pará? It is a qualitative study, based on the findings expressed in documents and reports of the Pastoral Land Commission in the light of post-colonial theories and public health. It presents a critical discussion about the neo-extractive capitalist development model and the modern world-system, manufacturer of exclusion and subordination, proposing epistemological and ontological alternatives, in articulation with the emancipatory social struggles in the fields and in the cities. There is evidence in the reports of the Pastoral Land Commission and in the official data of the Colonization and Agrarian Reform Institute that access to land in the analyzed region has changed the living and health conditions of thousands of landless people in a context of high conflicts and violence in the countryside.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not just a health problem, it is considered a profound shock to our societies and economies, highlighting a care crisis in which health professionals, especially women, are at the center of service and response efforts. Thus, this article aimed to problematize care practices during the COVID-19 pandemic with a focus on the right to protection for women health professionals, according to Michel Foucault’s conceptions of self-care, considering the power-knowledge axis. The study goes on to question about the crisis of care and makes self-care of health workers visible especially during the COVID-19 pandemic as a possible way for the reversion of domination practices through the creation of freedom practices, affirming the production of care as a creator of value and respect for the life of all.

The article aimed to analyze the importance attributed to health teaching skills by students and university professors of Nursing and Medicine courses. The data were collected in 2017 based on the application of two health teaching skill scales to 315 students and 80 teachers. Differences between groups of students (type of course, institution and age group) and teachers (type of course, institution, length of service and type of teaching practice) were analyzed using non-parametric tests. The results indicated a high importance of health teaching skills for both teachers and university students. Significant differences were also observed between students from the Nursing and Medicine courses, from public and private institutions, as well as from professors with different working times and teaching practices. This result encourages research to assess the health teaching skills adopted in university courses, as they directly contribute to the development of teacher training actions.

This is a qualitative study that analyzed the professionals’ perceptions of imprisoned mother’s babies. Professionals from São Paulo (Brazil) from the legal, public policy, social, health, education, security and religious volunteering areas were interviewed. The results showed that the romantic look of motherhood survives behind bars. Thus, the baby mobilizes feelings of love, compassion and joy. However, feelings of anger, sadness and pity also emerge for encountering babies in a place of segregation and punishment. The baby may be stuck with the stigma of the mother’s criminality, represented with hopelessness and prejudice by some professionals with the expression ‘evil seed’. Professionals feel touched by the prison maternity scenario, expressing contradictory feelings of sadness and joy, hope and hopelessness, anger and compassion. The subjective implications and representations about the baby in a prison context, therefore, support the care offered by the professionals, their attitudes towards the prisoners, the actors involved and the future actors: the babies.

This article presents meanings that women users of the Family Health Strategy program attribute to health and its relation to care. The qualitative method was applied, using as a theoretical reference the discussions of Canguilhem and Winnicott on the notion of health, as well as notes on the medicalization of life. The fieldwork was developed through in-depth interviews between May and July 2015, with users of the Family Health Strategy program, and was treated with a hermeneutical analysis. Health, related both to the absence of illness and to complete well-being, as well as to the disposition to face the sufferings inherent to life. There is a coexistence between the unconditional trust in medical technology and a wager on intuitive care modes or those originated from social relationships. The health service contributes to the access to the treatment and, at the same time, reinforces the commitment to the prevention of all the misfortunes of the body, as well as the idea that the right to health care is related to the individual responsibility to keep it perfect. In a culture marked by individualism and competitiveness, individuals living in contexts of deep social injustice submit to rules to prevent the risk of becoming ill, but their possibilities of creating unique ways of enjoying life are restricted.

The aim of the present study was to understand how the professional identities of the endemic combat agents are built. The endemic combat agent has a strategic role in the prevention and control of arboviruses such as dengue, chikungunya, zika, and yellow fever, which are serious public health problems in Brazil. The research was based on the concepts of qualification and professional identity, referenced by the sociology of work. This was an analytical study, conducted between 2014 and 2017, with a qualitative approach, carried out from focus groups, with 30 endemic combat agents from a sanitary district in Contagem (state of Minas Gerais). The data were analyzed according to the assumptions of the content analysis. Most of the agents were women and had completed high school. The results pointed out that there is a lack of knowledge on the part of the agents about the protocol for the execution of their work activities and about the technical contents related to dengue. The teaching-learning process occurs orally and through non-formal work processes. Failure to receive badges presented itself as an identity problem. It was concluded that the professional identities of the agents were built and rebuilt without a solid professional training and in precarious work conditions. Recognition, as an aspect of identity, occurs on the affective plane and not only in the work processes.

The goal of the present study was to understand the experience of the coexistence between the substitutive services and the psychiatric hospital. This is a study with a qualitative hermeneutic approach. The research was carried out in the Northeast of Brazil. It contemplated two scenarios: Center of Psychosocial Attention, and Psychiatric Hospital. It included 14 participants, 8 of whom were workers of the Center of Psychosocial Attention and 6 who were health workers at the Psychiatric Hospital. To obtain the information, an in-depth interview and a systematic observation were performed. The collection took place from August to October 2017. The analysis of the interviews was performed using the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur, through the following steps: speech to text transcription, exhaustive reading, structural analysis, wide-ranging comprehension of the text, interpretation and analysis. The results showed that there is a paradoxical coexistence between the psychosocial care services and the psychiatric hospital, even though the hospital service is not recognized and legitimized as part of the mental health network.