Citizen council on euthanasia: social participation in health and citizen formation

Abstract

The article describes the implementation of the Citizen Council on euthanasia in children and ado-lescents in Colombia. An exploratory qualitative study using the participatory action research met-hodology was carried out. In the first phase, three panels were created with trainers, stakeholders and citizens, and two deliberative stages (formative and public) were carried out. In another phase involving content analysis -guided by questions addressed to citizens- a characterization of the mini-public involved in the deliberative exercise was made. The transformation of the opinions of the participating citizens, as well as their deliberative capacities, is a central finding of the study. The authors identified the effectiveness of the methodology to facilitate citizen's design of consensual recommendations about complex issues, as well as contributing to pedagogical processes related to democracy and social participation in health training.