Health promotion: Criticism of everyday life medicalization practices

Abstract

The aim of this study was to analyze the meanings of the practices of health promotion. The results indicate that the practices in different social areas are sustained within the mechanisms of social control and management of vulnerable populations. Thus, there is the feedback of the biomedical paradigm now materialized in different practices in different areas beyond the traditional health services. It is concluded that health promotion in areas of daily life presents the challenge of expanding the potential autonomy of action of individuals in movements that consider the potential social areas in constant transformation of everyday life. Ke y w or ds Health promotion, Community health promotion, Community health psychology, Critical health psychology, Qualitative methods 1 I n t r odu ct ion The work is the result of research which used as a subject the promotion of health practices in areas of everyday life. Health promotion policy-making exhibits a strong ideological hue. Releases on the subject in Brazil were constructed aggregating concepts and technologies that are expressed in projects that reflect different conceptions of the health-disease [1, 2]. In the last three decades of the twentieth century, the concept of health promotion has developed vigorously in the country and had its conceptual basis and policies discussed in international events like the International Conferences on Health Promotion in Brazil and that reverberated in the formulation of a National Policies for Health Promotion. In this study, we adopted the category of the social area as a field for the study of health promotion by understanding that health is generated in all areas where people live, love, work and entertain themselves by referring, as the "place" as an organized space for analysis and intervention. There is a potential for health development in virtually every organization or community. This understanding allows taking over social spaces as demonstrators of the meanings of health promotion that are assumed within. Areas for health promotion can be defined as the place or social context in which people in their daily activities, interact with environmental factors, social and personal that affect health and well-being [3, 4]. Thus, the areas are the locations