Many health professionals in Brazil have been drawn to the popular education movement and the struggle by grassroots social movements to change the country's health care system. As a result, numerous health services in the country have incorporated participatory relations with the community that break with the prevailing authoritarian tradition. Such relations have helped deconstruct: medical authoritarianism, the disregard for patient and family knowledge and initiatives, imposition of technical solutions to broader social problems, and political propaganda embedded in the implementation of the biomedical model. However, it does not suffice for only few to adopt such an approach. It is necessary to disseminate such knowledge in health institutions as a whole. The increasing strength of the Brazilian social movement is creating the institutional conditions to move beyond a previous phase in which health practices integrated with the logic of the population's reality occurred in only a limited number of transient alternative experiences. It is necessary to find administrative channels and professional training to foster the widespread adoption of such approaches within the Unified National Health System (SUS).
Popular education; social movement; health practices