ABSTRACT
This work recovers the passage of the public health physician and university professor Antônio Sérgio da Silva Arouca through the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), between 1967 and 1975, through the study of three important documents kept in this institution, namely, his Functional Life File, the Commemorative Magazine of the 25th anniversary of the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine of the Faculty of Medical Sciences, where his statement is included, and the Final Report of the “Octávio Ianni” Truth and Memory Commission. At the UNICAMP’s Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, he found a favorable environment to act according to his convictions. He joined the discipline of Social Sciences Applied to Medicine, whose theoretical content dialogued with extramural actions developed by students in poor neighborhoods of the city, in order to give them the opportunity to recognize the importance and influence of social factors on the health status of individuals and populations. This experience probably had a great influence on the young professor who, years later, would produce a thesis of extreme relevance for the formulation and consolidation of Brazilian Public Health, and preside over the 8th National Health Conference, which established the bases for the Unified Health System.
KEYWORDS
Public health; Unified Health System; Universities; History of medicine