What has been discussed about Popular Health Education in recent years: a narrative review of the literature

Abstract

This narrative review aims to analyze the literature on Collective Health to recognize what has been discussed in Popular Health Education (PHE) from 2019 to 2022. Fifty-nine articles were selected, critically analyzed, and separated into six summary categories: popular education practices as promoters of a participatory vision of health; popular education and the valorization of local popular culture knowledge and practices; popular health education as a strategy to support social reconstruction in the face of setbacks in public policies; the importance of national articulation in popular education as a response to its devaluation; popular education as a liberating project thinking about the democratic formation and the fight against institutional and structural violence; popular education in the university health training process. We achieved significant results that elucidate the importance of PHE within the Unified Health System and the academic education of health professionals, fostering respect for ancestral knowledge and care horizontality. We also reaffirm the need for national articulation and dialogue with grassroots movements to advance Brazil’s emancipatory and dignifying health agenda.