Special Public Health Service Research Articles

Saneamento básico em pequenas cidades: contribuições do sanitarista Szachna Eliasz Cynamon para a promoção da saúde

The aim was to evaluate the participation of the private initiative in the sanitation sector in municipalities with less than 50 thousand inhabitants and the importance of the model of action of the Special Public Health Service - SESP and of the sanitation actions developed by the sanitary engineer Szachna Eliasz Cynamon in these localities. This is a documentary research with content analysis, exploratory analysis of secondary data and the Mann-Whitney test was used to verify if there are significant differences in the participation of the private sector in larger municipalities. Two videos available to the public of the seminar on the environment and health were examined, as well as indicators of water supply and sanitary sewage on open consultation sites, the sanitarist collection, books and articles on the subject and normative acts. According to the test (p-value<0.05), private companies predominantly operate in larger cities in Brazil, thus, according to the content analysis, the SESP performance model and the practices advocated by Cynamon would currently encourage, sanitation solutions that could lead to environments favorable to health and the desired universalization.

Eminent but nameless: Lydia das Dôres Matta and Brazilian nursing after 1930

The article analyzes the process of reconstructing the nursing profession in Brazil post-1930. We examine teaching practices in higher education and the reinsertion of black women in professional nursing through the biography of Lydia das Dôres Matta, a nurse trained in the second class graduated from the São Paulo School of Nursing as a scholarship student in the Special Public Health Service Nursing Program. The results allow reflections on the professional identity of Brazilian nursing from the trajectory of a black woman, as well as on the historiography of nursing in Brazil.

The leprosy "drama": Governador Valadares, public health policies, and their territorial implications in the 1980s

The incidence of leprosy in Governador Valadares, Brazil, in the 1980s spurred this town to pioneer the introduction of polychemotherapy. The aim of this research was to understand how the different actors involved in this context interacted, especially the employees and patients at the Special Public Health Service. To identify the territories that these interactions inevitably constituted, a variety of theoretical instruments were used, including dramatism (Burke) and performance (Turner). By taking a theatrical metaphor, we sought to find out the dynamics by which the different actors took the stage and established their most significant relationships in a dynamic process of constituted and reconstituted territories.

Izabel dos Santos and the training of the health workers.

This article discusses the career of Izabel dos Santos (1927-2010) as a means of examining the connections between health schools and agendas in contemporary Brazil. The article highlights dos Santos's training and her work in the Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública (SESP- Special Public Health Service), the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and in the formulation and implementation of national training programs for human resources within the area of health from the late 1970s onwards. The article highlights dos Santos's central role in the formulation and implementation of training policies for health workers, especially nursing technicians and assistants, and demonstrates how she occupies an important place in the history of Brazilian public health.

"O Sesp nunca trabalhou com índios": a (in)visibilidade dos indígenas na atuação da Fundação Serviços de Saúde Pública no estado do Amazonas

From 1960 to 1990, the Fundação de Serviços de Saúde Pública (Public Health Services Foundation) was in charge of a network of health services across Brazil, in continuation of work previously done by the Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública (Special Public Health Service). The article presents a 2010 research conducted in the state of Amazonas regarding the Foundation's activities among indigenous populations based on interviews with the Foundation's personnel and the analysis of its documentation. The findings indicate that while the Foundation had no formal policy for indigenous populations, in practice its staff did serve indigenes since in most municipalities in the interior of Amazonas they comprised a significant number of the inhabitants.

Memorial de Maria de Lourdes Almeida: historia e enfermagem no Brasil pos-1930

The Special Public Health Service (Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública) reframed both the training and the professional identity of Brazilian nursing when it reopened the doors to black men and women. This is the premise of the present article, which uses the historical method to analyze the results of Brazil's Nursing Program based on the personal experience of one of its actors. Primary sources consist of the documents attached to the academic dossier of Maria de Lourdes Almeida, one of the first beneficiaries of a grant from the Service and head nurse with the Araraquara Special Health Service, part of the Center for Training School of Hygiene and Public Health at the Universidade de São Paulo. It is argued that the Nursing Program, which was implemented in Brazil under the Estado Novo, changed the professional profile of Brazilian nursing after the 1930s and solidified the interventionist policy promoted in the Vargas era.

Entre o moderno e o rústico: a territorialização da medicina preventiva no médio Rio Doce

Recent historiography on the middle Doce River recognizes the work of Brazil's Special Public Health Service as one of the factors of regional development from 1940 to 1950, but there has been no deeper exploration of the activities and methods used by the service. An evaluation is essential to identify the concept of health and development that underpinned its practices and its conditions for sustainability. The service's contribution must be framed within its established relation with the population, who benefited from the developmental changes achieved by the agency, although it changes health practices, customs, and cultural values and re-organized space, interfering with established temporalities and redefining prevailing territorialities.

Centros de Saúde: ciência e ideologia na reordenação da saúde pública no século XX

Health Centers appeared in the United States around 1910. They provided social assistance in conjunction with some type of medical care. Their original separation between preventive and curative medicine was superseded by the concept of whole health in the 1940s, when Health Center discourse became part of medical education. In the 1960s, the notion of community medicine arose out of the war on poverty. These ideas spread through Brazil in the 1920s and were strengthened under the Vargas policy of national construction, but it was the Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública (Special Public Health Service) that was primarily responsible for lending them their practical and conceptual shape in this country.

Ciências sociais e educação sanitária: a perspectiva da Seção de Pesquisa Social do Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública na década de 1950

The article transcribes and comments on three papers published by sociologist José Arthur Rios in the Boletim do Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública in the early 1950s. These texts stand as valuable references in understanding a period in which projects for cultural change guided health programs and especially health education initiatives. The article begins by portraying the backdrop against which the Special Public Health Service conducted its activities following its 1942 creation as the result of a cooperation agreement between the Brazilian and U.S. governments. Aspects of José Arthur Rios' professional trajectory and intellectual influences are also examined, and the role of the social scientist in non-academic areas and in the shaping of public agencies and policies in Brazil is discussed.

O Plano de Saneamento da Amazônia (1940-1942)

The article addresses the Amazon Sanitation Plan and the political context in which it was formulated between 1940 and 1941. It examines the role of Getúlio Vargas, the activities of the plan's main protagonists (such as Evandro Chagas, João de Barros Barreto, and Valério Konder), its key proposals, and its demise as of 1942 upon creation of the Special Public Health Service (Sesp), which grew out of cooperation agreements between Brazil and the US following both nations' involvement in World War II. A reproduction of the Plan as published in the Arquivos de Higiene in 1941 is included.