Care and consumption: A Latin American social medicine’s conceptual framework to comprehend oral health inequalities

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article offers a conceptual framework that arises out of the Latin American Social Medicine/Collective Health (LASM/CH) tradition to comprehend inequalities in oral health. We conducted a dialogue between the LASM/CH proposal called social determination of health (in particular one of its nuclear categories ‘ways of living together’) and studies that address social inequalities and oral health. This dialogue allowed us to redefine oral health–disease–treatment as a process that either promotes or harms well-being and is modulated by different ways of living together where not only patients and professionals, but also governments, supranational bodies, and national and international markets represented by food, pharmaceutical, insurance, personal care, and cosmetic companies interact. The article proposes the cycle particular–consumption care/institutional–consumption care as the construct that allows investigators to think about how ways of living together relate to oral health inequalities. ‘Particular–consumption care’ includes ways and possibilities to access healthy foods and practice protective hygienic measures. ‘Institutional–consumption care’ refers to institutional responses related to supply, access to services, capabilities for resolution, and pedagogical practices.