Objectives: To describe the historical and conceptual trajectory of Public Health and to reveal its origins in preventive projects and social medicine

Nunes, E

English

University of New Mexico

University of New Mexico
UNM Digital Repository
English Latin American Social Medicine
11-10-2009
Public Health: The History of an Idea and a
Concept
E Nunes
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Recommended Citation
Nunes, E. "Public Health: The History of an Idea and a Concept." (2009). https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/lasm_cucs_en/50
Document CUCS # 17C  
 
S&S19943(2)Nunes 
 
Nunes E. Saúde coletiva: história de uma idéia e de um conceito. [Public Health: 
The History of an Idea and a Concept.] Sáude e Sociedade (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil) 
1994; 3(2): 5-21. 
Objectives: To describe the historical and conceptual trajectory of Public Health and to 
reveal its origins in preventive projects and social medicine.  
Methodology: Descriptive analytical.  
Results: The author describes two phases of the history of public health in Latin 
America: a) the establishment of the "preventive project" and b) the origin and 
conceptualization of social medicine.  
For the author, the preventive project has its origins in two events: 1) the expansion of 
industrial production in manufacturing, linked to the accumulation of capital, the use of 
therapeutic technological innovations and individualized care; and 2) the establishment 
of the Preventive and Social Medicine that begins with the critique to the medical 
education biased by biologism, the training of public health workers, and the 
implementation of an integrated and communal model of medicine. 
The author addresses the origins of social medicine and discusses five sources of its 
conceptualization, which support the preventive medicine actions: a) the defense of the 
autonomy and the universal right to health; b) integration of various levels of prevention 
through the inclusion of individual and collective practices in health care; c) the arrival of 
new flows that allow the emergence of an innovative, critical and constructive analysis 
of the medical-social and its practice; d) professional training in epidemiology and social 
sciences in several Brazilian universities; and e) the consolidation of programs and 
residency practice in the training of new doctors. In this way, Public Health was 
consolidated into three dimensions and paths: 1) as a school of thought, it passed 
through several conceptual areas and trends, such as policy formulation, socio and 
cultural perspectives of research on health, the subsidy of education and planning 
projects; the critic to Functionalism and implementation of analysis of mental health 
through Marxism. 2) As a social movement, allows the articulation of a set of political 
and institutional conditions once neglected or ignored by the traditional model. And 3) 
as a theoretical practice, integrate into one conceptual body as much the biological 
perspective as the social one. 
Finally, the author conceptualizes the collective health through three perspectives of 
analysis: a) the integration of the practice of healing and medical prevention; b) the 
focus on specificities as methodology for quantifying and explaining the collective 
dimension; and c) the understanding of social dynamics as a result of submission to 
rules. These perspectives were explicit in a scene of inequity, poverty, violence, 
environmental degradation and social mobilization happened at the end of 1980. Thus 
for the author, public health is necessarily interdisciplinary and allows the construction 
of an expanded knowledge of health. In the Public Health meet knowledge, reflection 
and social-collective criticism. As a field, it allows research and integrates into the 
synchronic and diachronic history of the disease, its social determinants and the 
organization of health services.  
Conclusions: The author concludes that Public Health has its origins in preventive 
medicine and social medicine and is simultaneously structured as a mode of thought, 
theoretical practice and social movement.  


Public Health: The History of an Idea and a Concept

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Public Health: The History of an Idea and a Concept

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