It aims to know the social representations present in the narrative of the practices of managers who work in São Mateus (ES), Brazil, into how they perform the planning of actions and about the participation (or not) of workers and population. The collection indicates two central ideas: (1) planning, which is subdivided into: common planning, centralized planning, difficulty of planning, and (2) fostering popular participation. It is concluded that managers, although they recognize the value of planning actions, they practice actions much more focused on the maintenance of the current system than for to generate changes in order to the consolidation of the Unified Health System (SUS).
Health manager; Health planning; Unified Health System