Epistemological reflection for the investigation of the processes of social health determination

Abstract

A central debate in contemporary public health revolves around the social determinants of health in the model of the World Health Organization (who) and Latin American social medicine. Considering that in the health literature there are multiple criticisms of the who approach such as its positivist emphasis, reductionism of the ontology of the social and linearity of its methods; at the same time that there is a low amount of health texts about “critical realism” as the epistemological foundation of the Latin American current; The present work exposes some historical concepts of the Latin American proposal and tries to deepen the development of its epistemological positioning from the “critical realism”. Critical realism demonstrates a sort of epistemological “naivety” in the who model, demonstrates that the difference of both approaches is not reducible to a semantics or social approach of the health, and highlights operational challenges for the model Latin American.