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

The knowledge and practices of individuals (re)produce themselves daily based on the intertwining of personal experience with the human and social relations experienced in the various collective spaces. In this regard, schools and health facilities are privileged spaces of action and research. The purpose of this article is to discuss knowledge and practices related to eating habits, central to the crosscutting theme of health, through dialog with education and health professionals of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. To achieve this, discussions carried out in the socio-anthropological field of eating were considered. Qualitative research methods were used to enhance the intersubjectivities and meanings the subjects attribute to their own life experiences. Four focus groups were analyzed, which resulted in debates on the social processes related to food, to changes and continuities in food systems, and to the challenges of commensality in the contemporary context. Knowledge on these professionals’ perceptions is useful to develop health education practices that, by exercising transdisciplinary, consider food as a pedagogical element in the construction of knowledge by critical citizens and for a healthy life.

This article discusses what management professionals think about the continuing health education processes in the city of Recife, state of Pernambuco (Northeast Brazil), describing the actions and relating them to the concepts of permanent or continuing education. It originated from a case study that used semistructured interviews made with seven managers. Content analysis was the method chosen to process the data. Permanent health education has been used as a tool to implement new work devices in primary health care. Results point to its use by management as a tool to change the working process. A few departments of the Recife Municipal Health Secretariat appropriated themselves more properly of the permanent health education concept, while others see it as equal to continuing education. The actions arose from difficulties at work, from what management has defined as important to train workers, and from what the universities have noted as demands for professional qualification. A few devices cited were the matrix support, institutional support, and the unique therapeutic project. The difficulties faced to improve the actions were fragmentation and the lack of prioritization of continuing health education by a few management professionals.

The teaching-service integration commissions play an important role in the realization of the National Policy for Continuing Education in Health. The purpose of this qualitative, descriptive study was to get to know the factors that enhance or weaken the construction and development of regional plans for continuing education in the view of the members participating in the teaching-service integration commissions in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (South Brazil). The participant sample was comprised based on the purposeful, intentional or deliberate method. The results show the importance of such commissions in the development of regional plans for continuing health education. The professionals' participation and involvement and the structuring of the services are considered facilitating factors. Limiting factors, meanwhile, are difficulties in coordination, participation, and personal and institutional involvement, in addition to the participation of the managers. The managers' involvement in the process is dual: their knowledge and involvement are considered facilitating factors, while ignorance and failure to facilitate insertion in the educational process are seen as harmful to the development of the process as a whole.

This article is a qualitative survey of curricular practices and policies related to medical training. The method used was dialectical historical materialism based on a comparative study of two cases. The sample was intentional, making a cross section of two medical schools: the Catholic University of Goiás (Brazil) and the College of Health Sciences of the University of Beira Interior (Portugal). The overall goal was to compare the curricular policies for medical education in both countries and to analyze the curriculum organization practices prevailing in the two institutions with a view of each country's policies. Philosophically, the study was based on Habermas’ theory of communicative action. The similarities between the two courses remain in the curricular matrix, with teaching-learning focused on the student and on the graduate's profile. The greatest differences appeared in the social inclusion proposal advocated by the Catholic University of Goiás, and in the assumption of research and internationalization of the College of Health Sciences of the University of Beira Interior. It was concluded that there is a need to solidify the current educational projects and to adopt a reflective school with real proposals aiming to gain a glimpse into the possibility of social change in concrete reality.

Respect for biosafety standards is critical for the provision of safe care, and education in vocational training in health plays a key role in this process. This article is the outcome of an exploratory-descriptive research project that used a qualitative approach to identify how technical education nursing teachers working at institutions linked to the Federal Professional and Technological Education Network in a state in Southern Brazil conceive biosafety. Data were collected through interviews conducted for a one-month period, in 2012, among nursing teachers of two institutions involved in supervised internship activities. The results showed three views on biosafety: as a synonym of personal protective equipment; as protection of those involved in the work; and as safety for life. It was also noted that teachers reproduce what they learned in school and make decisions influenced by scenarios in their practice. It was concluded that teachers understand the importance of adopting safe working practices and that education influences the actions of future professionals; however, a minority of them took the concept of defending life involved in this issue into account.

This study is on food consumption in the context of meals provided at school, understanding this space as strongly proactive in forming healthy eating habits and encouraging sustainable development. It reports on the case of the municipality of Dois Irmãos, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, and the actions related to the work done with the students, combining changes in the consumption and production of food and linking health and sustainability with such changes. It uses secondary sources and participant observation. Based on the troubling diagnosis of the food and nutritional status of this population, several activities were developed to promote sustainable food consumption, including a review of the suppliers and supply chains, forms of production and quality of the food offered; regulation of the types of food brought from home; care in formulating menus, and development of practical educational activities that could blend the improvement of eating habits with greater appreciation for the rural area. In this case, a verification was made of examples of innovative practices, developed in an integrated manner, which coordinated food and nutrition education synergistically with actions aimed at the consolidation of a sustainable food system.

This study uses a theoretical model and an empirical model based on finite difference and linear regression equations to analyze trends in the supplementary health insurance market in Brazil. The resolution of the finite difference equation model generates three possible scenarios for the market: in the first, there would be infinite growth of resources available in the industry; in the second, there would be stability, given the complementarity of the sum of the expense of the fraction with a fraction of the profit, both calculated on revenue: the resources available in the industry would be around the amount of the initial contribution paid by individuals, estimated based on linear regression; finally, in the third scenario, the system would be led to exhaustion. The results show that the system is sustainable over the long term.

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