The leser reform: The architecture of a São Paulo (Brazil) public health project, 1967-1979

Abstract

As part of a study on the history of public health in São Paulo, aiming at identifying and debating regional peculiarities on the creation and consolidation of public health, this article intends to present a historical dimension analysis on some of the actions carried out by the sanitary physician Walter Leser, in charge of the Secretary of Health in the state of São Paulo between 1967 and 1970, in the first period, and between 1975 and 1979, in the second period. It was, in fact, in this last period that actions were undertaken to implement the Leser Sanitary Reform, as was named, at the end, this São Paulo initiative. This article recovers the relevance of these actions, both in the sense of reorganization of the government’s public health machinery and for the contextual opening to the public health movement of São Paulo, which was organized, above all, within the state government’s machinery of the period. It is considered that the Leser Reform has had a relevant impact especially in the constitution of Primary Health Care (PHC) and in its consolidation as an important level for the health system, as it would be considered in the proposal and implementation of the Brazilian National Health System (SUS) after 1988. However, the public policy that defined the PHC under the Leser Reform as a certain care model, the Programação em Saúde, had a very short historical existence.