The author studies the Brazilian health reform process and its relationship to the production of knowledge that influenced the approval of the Unified National Health System (SUS) by the 1988 Brazilian Constitutional Congress and the System's implementation in the 1990s. The Health Movement incorporated knowledge developed by collective health researchers and oriented technical practices that served as the basis for organization of the SUS. The process under way in the 1990s led to new concepts of the state and market in the field of health. New questions were formulated that are expected to impact the collective health research agenda, dealing with the issues of equity, quality in health, and the democratization of the National Health System.
Health reform; equity; quality in health; Unified National Health System; state and market; collective health research; social medicine