The structure of social representations on health and illness among members of social movements/A estrutura das representacoes sociais sobre saude e doenca entre membros de movimentos sociais

The scope of the study was to identify the structure of social representations regarding health and illness as expressed by representatives of social movements. The study included 66 members of social movements in the Federal District of Brazil. A questionnaire was applied to obtain the socio-economic profile of the participants and the free association technique was used in order to identify the likely peripheral and central core of the social representations analyzed by version 2000 EVOC software (Ensemble de Programmes Permettant l'Analyse des Evocations). The study results indicate that the majority of the participants have been activists for longer than six years, male, young adults, with above high school level education, monthly income over two minimum salaries, and are users of the Brazilian Unified Health System. Concerning the social representations of health structure, it was found that "quality of life" comprised the core system, while in the case of the social representations of illness, the core was found to be "suffering." The study suggests that the respondents' social representations of health and illness remain distant from a Social Determinants paradigm considered necessary for the assertion of the right to health and for achieving quality of life. Key words Health, Illness, Social representation, Social movements Este estudo buscou analisar as representacoes sociais de saude e doenca dos integrantes dos movimentos sociais da saude do Distrito Federal, a fim de destacar potencialidades e limitacoes a ampliacao da garantia da integralidade da atencao a saude. Aplicou-se questionario a 66 participantes para verificar o seu perfil, alem do emprego da tecnica de associacao livre e hierarquizacao de itens com termo indutor saude e doenca para identificacao da estrutura das representacoes sociais, que foram analisados com o software EVOC (Ensemble de Programmes Permettant l'Analyse des Evocations) versao 2000. Os integrantes dos oito movimentos identificados sao majoritariamente adultos jovens, masculinos, militantes ha mais de seis anos, que estudaram alem do ensino medio, renda acima de dois salarios minimos e usuarios do SUS. A estrutura das representacoes sociais demonstra que o elemento qualidade de vida compoe o nucleo central do termo saude e o elemento sofrimento do termo doenca. As representacoes sociais do processo saude-doenca indicam avancos na sua concepcao, entretanto necessitam ser consubstanciadas na perspectiva do modelo de de