Gender and sexuality in Brazilian public health undergraduation

Abstract

Public Health undergraduation aims to train health professionals with knowledge fo-cused on the promotion, prevention and health systems management. However, an apparent si-lencing of debate in the courses is noted regarding the approach to issues of gender and sexuality. The objective is to understand the presence or not of contents that consider gender and sexuality as-pects in this undergraduation, using the qualita-tive analysis, through Documentary Research and Content Analysis, from the research and analysis of the Curricular Pedagogical Projects (CPP) of Brazilian Public Health undergraduate courses. A total of 16 projects were analyzed from the 21 existing courses in Brazil. We present, mainly, that 12 courses have disciplines that discuss gender and sexuality issues during graduation, sometimes mandatorily or optionally. We conclude that the debate on gender and sexuality occurs in most of the Institutions with Public Health undergraduate courses. However, this field of discussion must also be improved in the National Curricular Gui-deline for Public Health courses, which should ex-plicit these topics, enabling an undergraduation that overcomes prejudice, violence and binarism found in a heteronormative and sexist society.