There is a need to transform health monitoring from an instrument of a superficial and passive insight of health, into a tool for critical health assessment, advocacy and collective empowerment; conventional health surveillance, in other words, must be converted to active community driven monitoring. Official information systems are usually describing isolated "disease factors" and associated morbidity outcomes, instead of analyzing the generative processes that make part of the complex determination of health. Subordinated societies have undergone a historical process of assault to human social and health rights; national and international economic exploitation and political-cultural domination have produced an scenario of profound inequity and health deterioration which demand a more penetrating knowledge and information of health scientists and experts. In the face of those needs, this papers exposes the flaws of traditional surveillance and the potentialities of new approaches of health monitoring, based on the new conceptual and practical framework of critical epidemiology
Participative health monitoring; Traditional surveillance; Critical epidemiology; Epidemiological profile
