The Special Public Health Service (Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública) reframed both the training and the professional identity of Brazilian nursing when it reopened the doors to black men and women. This is the premise of the present article, which uses the historical method to analyze the results of Brazil's Nursing Program based on the personal experience of one of its actors. Primary sources consist of the documents attached to the academic dossier of Maria de Lourdes Almeida, one of the first beneficiaries of a grant from the Service and head nurse with the Araraquara Special Health Service, part of the Center for Training School of Hygiene and Public Health at the Universidade de São Paulo. It is argued that the Nursing Program, which was implemented in Brazil under the Estado Novo, changed the professional profile of Brazilian nursing after the 1930s and solidified the interventionist policy promoted in the Vargas era.
history; nursing; identity; Vargas era; Maria de Lourdes Almeida (1917-?)