Democracy and participative management: a strategy for equity on health?

Abstract

The practices and mechanisms of social participation in the field of health in Brazil represent references for participative democracy. This essay analyses the Equity Promotion Committees adopted by Health Ministry. Equity in health, understood as services provision for specific needs of groups or persons, requires individuals and groups with power and autonomy to give voice to their desires and needs, provoking articulated answers from government, valuing the integration of different public institutions within and outside of the health sector, in a cross- sectional and inter-institutional way. The implementation of this logic in the formulation and in the management of health policies helps in dealing with the complexity of processes related to health and disease and to inequalities. There is a need to mobilize and to re-politicize the debate related to the right to health, in a perspective of enlarging participation and decision power of excluded social groups.