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Needs in health/health needs: concepts, implications and challenges for the Brazilian Unified Health System

ABSTRACT

This study reviewed systematically the literature on ‘needs in health/health needs’. This was an integrative review using the Virtual Health Library portal. Portuguese, English and Spanish were the languages used and only the full texts were recovered with a specific focus on the Unified Health System. A total of 17 articles were included, of which 88.8% were indexed in the Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences database. There is a varied form of appropriation of the theme ‘needs in health/health needs’, a very broad concept whose definition is not well delimited by the authors, directing it to three nuclei of meaning: ‘constituted social right’, ‘articulated set of the effectiveness of social rights’ and ‘adjustment between living and working conditions with the inherent diversity of collectivities’. Several implications for the Unified Health System were presented and could be compiled in seven blocks: ‘capitalism and its crisis’, ‘financing’, ‘characteristics of the Brazilian social formation’, ‘problems of public health management’, ‘public-private mix’, ‘terminological problems’ and ‘scarcity of resources’. Finally, the main challenges of applying the needs in the Unified Health System move between the symbolic, the critical-political, the coherence between financing-principles, the State, macroeconomic policy, management and local actions. Investing in overcoming the challenges listed can be a guide in realizing needs as the center of health action.

KEYWORDS
Unified Health System; Healthcare financing; Right to health; Health policy; Equity in the resource allocation

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