RETURNING TO THE PAST TO UNDERSTAND THE PRESENT: THE TRAJECTORY OF RECOGNIZING HEALTH AS A RIGHT AND AN IMPORTANT ELEMENT OF CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL INCLUSION

Abstract

The debate about the concept of health and its recognition as a right involves a range of external influences, such as economic, social, cultural and ethnic factors. Thus, the problem investigates the extent to which this fact justifies changes in the concept of health over time, as well as its consolidation in the sphere of human and fundamental rights. Based on this idea, the text aims to encourage reflection on the emergence of the right to health as an important element of citizenship, verifying, through a bibliographic approach that follows the hypothetical deductive method, that health is interconnected to the environment and the way people live, as well as the possibility of access to essential goods and services. Therefore, health has been defined by the World Health Organization as a right that results from complete physical, mental and social well-being, and from this background, Brazil has been incorporating its responsibility to guarantee access to health, once that the exclusionary model of public health service provision was questioned by the Sanitary Reform Movement, which claimed the formation of a single health system that was universal, integral and egalitarian.