Summary:
Reexamining the principal changes introduced in teaching Preventive and Social Medicine in the last years, the study shows that these modifications reveal not only the limits imposed to this teaching by the present organization of health services, but mostly the profound meaning of the “preventive dilemma”. It analyzes the theorical basis of a strategy which permits the approximation of Preventive and Social Medicine teaching and the institutions and health programs. Examples of this proposal are shown by the outline of the discipline Public Health and Prophylactic Measures, of the Department of the UFBA Medical-School, which has been discussed since its antecedents in 1975 up to 1980 when the new program was elaborated.