Social participation in health in Brazil: technical-scientific production in the period 1990-2014 and suggestion of a research agenda

Abstract

This paper conducts a survey of the technical-scientific literature on public health, in order to verify the nature of research on social participation and detail the limits and advances of this research, highlighting gaps and suggesting a research agenda. Articles related to the topic of “social participation” were selected from the database of the Virtual Health Library. It is a source of technical-scientific knowledge that includes other sources and is managed by an organization belonging to the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), the World Health Organization (WHO) office for the Americas. All articles were classified according to four sub-topics: “participation,” “councils,” “conferences,” and “other.” The sub-topics of “councils” and “conferences” were detailed according to the federative level to which they belong. The totality of articles was classified according to their date of publication and grouped by periods. There is hegemony of the sub-topic of “councils” (41%), followed by the sub-topic of “participation” (39%). Production on social participation increased in the period 2001-2010 (in relation to the interval 1990-2000). The occurrence of texts based on case studies becomes thus evident (55%).