COLLECTIVE HEALTH TEACHING IN THE CONTEXT OF UNDERGRADUATE HEALTH SCIENCES: EXPERIENCE REPORT

Abstract

: Collective Health has traditionally been defined as a field of knowledge and practices that presupposes the understanding of health as an eminently social, collective phenomenon, historically determined by the conditions and ways of life of different groups of the population. The theoretical and epistemological debate that exists today in the field of Public Health contemplates a more advanced concept of health, as an object of knowledge and intervention, understood as part of the health-disease-care complex, which incorporates the trajectory of the relationships that determine it, including the relationship of individuals, social groups and populations with the health service system. In addition, it has become essential to ratify the teaching of the means that Collective Health makes up from the first moments in health courses, given the evolution of the influence of different factors that are linked to the health-disease-care process. It characterizes the course's commitment to the new academic models, which translates into its unconventional curriculum matrix, where information is available on who coordinates the series and module, which days other activities are developed in addition to small tutorial groups. According to some pedagogical projects of undergraduate courses in the health area, it was structured in a curriculum focused on Family and Community Health, which is one of the concepts very strongly worked on throughout the course, from the perspective of professional qualification for good general training of health professionals. The Public Health area, like all the others in this university, is not constituted in the form of a Department, where it is inserted in the Biological and Health Sciences Nucleus, which aggregates all the professors of the eight courses in the area of health of public institutions. and private in Brazil. That said, the scope of Public Health teaching is understood as the health-disease-cure process is linked to basic health management for the population and how these concepts help to understand how to start acting in primary care that will reflect over time. The anthropological, additive and subtractive models of the disease improve the understanding of the social relationship generated through the processes of Collective Health, postulating for the contemporary understanding of this issue. Relating to courses in Nutrition, Nursing, Medicine, among others, understanding the health-disease process in the eyes of which it is not just the absence of health, but is affected by a context experienced by the patient, becomes fundamental for courses in the area. of health. It is evident that Collective Health constitutes a backbone of Health Schools with relevance for the training of this generalist professional.