This article attempts to rescue [resume] the positivity of the concept of risk as a tool to analyze human activity. To achieve this, an analysis is made of the use of the concept of risk during the history of the Aids epidemic, seeking to show the reasons that led it to be partially overcome with the use of the concept of vulnerability, which allows one to learn the social dynamics of this syndrome. An analysis is also made of how the concept of risk is learned in the public health field, showing the positive dimensions of this concept, which is frequently ignored in its use. Based on the concept of health of Canguilhem, one of the main pillars to elucidate this positive dimension on risk, and by analyzing the concept of the society of risk, in which this concept is learned in modernity as a mechanism of power and as a strategy to govern the populations, one arrives at the explanation provided by Nouroudine regarding the positive dimension of risk as one focused on activity. The article concludes suggesting that using this positive dimension of risk can assist both in understanding and in intervening with several social phenomena that the field of public health has difficulties apprehending.
risk; activity; health; public health; work