Intercultural health in Chile: Historical development and current challenges

Abstract

In 1992, Chile implemented for the first time a health program for indigenous peoples, the Health Program for the Mapuche Population (PROMAP), whose objective was to provide health care with cultural relevance, favoring the complementarity between the indigenous medical systems and the official system The current version of this initiative - named PESPI - has managed to reach almost all the Health Services in the country with this approach. The review that the academic world has made of these experiences, based on public health or medical anthropology, has focused on the analysis of the initiatives taken in rural indigenous contexts, from the point of view of the difficulties they have had to face and the meaning of the interculturality in health that they have managed to consolidate. However, little has been said about this program in urban contexts (currently, a space which our indigenous peoples are occupying progresively) or from the point of view of the notions of interculturality in health that they imply. Considering the above, the article offers a thematic review of national and international scientific publications on the subject, a critical analysis of intercultural health programs developed in Chile and a reflection on their challenges in the framework of urban indigenous dynamics.