The Brazilian National Health Surveillance Policy, established in 2018, aims to define how public health surveillance (PHS) and its fields should act in the country, becoming the main result of eight decades of institutional implementation of this public health issue in Brazil. So, to understand the conceptual, historical, and institutional progress of PHS in Brazil, 92 articles and editorials served to carry out an integrative literature review, selected by the Scielo, Redalyc, Lilacs, Pubmed, and Science Direct databases. Based on this literature, the conceptual and historical developments of the Brazilian PHS agreed with the most current ideas on the subject in the international context. However, the institutional scenario deserves attention, as it provides salient inequalities in the provision of the PHS service. Therefore, to improve this aspect, it is necessary to invest in actions on collection, information, and dissemination of data and relate them to technological and monitoring tools.

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