INSERTION OF PHYSICAL EDUCATION PROFESSIONALS IN THE UNIFIED HEALTH SYSTEM: HISTORY, ADVANCES AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

This essay explores the historical configuration of Physical Education (PE), highlighting its approaches and distances with public health, and discusses the critical aspects of the incorporation of PE professionals in the context of the Unified Health System (SUS). Initially configured as a school component, the PE expanded its field of action to Sports/Leisure and, later, to Health, when body practices/physical activities (BP/PA) were incorporated by public health policies. Numerically insufficient in the SUS, PE professionals are trained based on a model that is anchored in preventive and behaviorist discourses, which disregard the social determination of health-disease processes. The core of PE needs to transcend the practice based on BP/PA prescription under the sole pretext of increasing energy expenditure for the prevention and control of chronic non-communicable diseases, and the training processes need to be directed towards the understanding of health as a right.