Abstract
This article draws on current understandings of workers' health in Brazil that emerged concomitantly with advances in the field of public health. It describes the institutional trajectory of the field of workers' health within the Unified Health System (SUS), emphasizing the challenges faced in developing actions in the sphere of workers' health surveillance. It synthesizes the often tortuous path taken over the last 30 years between multiprofessional training processes, coordination between different levels of the SUS, interinstitutional support, especially from public universities, and interaction with participatory processes. It provides an overview of progress and challenges in the face of continuous changes in working conditions and work organization and the limited effectiveness of government policies designed to address occupational health risks. Finally, it suggest that progress has come out of the intertwining of social and academic movements, with the opening up of institutional spaces that transform the SUS, reviving the underlying principles of participation and health promotion in broad vision of state policy.
Highlights
The field of workers’ health in Brazil is the result of an accumulated heritage in the realm of public health, which has its roots in the social medicine movement in Latin America, and is strongly influenced by the experiences of the Italian workers’ movement
It is evident that the greatest achievement accomplished to date in the area of workers’ health in Brazil was its enshrinement as an area within the sphere of public health by the 1988 Constitution
Notwithstanding criticism surrounding its institutionalization and the development of actions[20], which are still not enough to cope with the daunting health challenges facing the world of work, huge progress has been made in this area in Brazil over the last 30 years
Summary
The field of workers’ health in Brazil is the result of an accumulated heritage in the realm of public health, which has its roots in the social medicine movement in Latin America, and is strongly influenced by the experiences of the Italian workers’ movement.Scientific advances in the fields of preventative medicine, social medicine and public health during the 1960s and 1970s broadened the framework for analyzing the health-disease process, including work-related health problems. Brazil’s Basic Health Law (Lei Orgânica da Saúde) provides that the SUS shall be responsible for action on workers’ health in the sphere of healthcare, surveillance, information, research and union participation.
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