Saúde da mulher e da criança: olhares polissêmicos

Abstract

Concerns with women's and children's health-which today take their place in the epicenter of health care knowledge and deeds-have not always been present in academic scenes, caregiving, governmental policies, and in the hierarchy of scientific production developed in different disciplinary arenas. Such concerns have bent themselves, in degrees, in plural methods of producing knowledge and creating varying impacts in what plucks the consumption of such production, according to present interests and objectives in the diverse historical moments and socio-cultural contexts. This theme has inspired the most diverse positions and arguments, in a yet permanent tension between the reiterated meaning focused on the women/maternity and child/ project of sources of power and the resulting conceptions of the socially ubiquitous look which in both appear contextualized and included in the realities of health care scenarios, where infancy and woman's health are valued, entangled in the conceptions of feminist studies, of reproductive rights and of the relationships of the species. The object of women's and children's health is worked through distinct lenses, spanning different disciplinary fields and bringing knowledge and practice closer together. The present edition of the Texto & Contexto Nursing Journal in different sections lays out various current positions about this theme, involving national and international publications that focus upon a specific horizon of nursing with the health of the woman and the child, but also upon looks that find each other in interdisciplinary and multi-professional exercise, the example of the necessary convergences with anthropology, orthodontics, psychology, and philosophy. However, the intentions are the same, that is, they have as they principal objective to attend to the needs of women and children, in various levels of assistance, and in different phases and specialty areas, hoping to contribute, above all, to the health and the exercise of citizenship. In the following synthesis, one can observe that the most part of the contributions of this publication are related to reproductive health when one considers women's and children's health. They pose questions that involved birth and the birthing process, excluding two articles that among them explore other themes that are also relevant within this issue. For example, they deal with women who have migrated and women who need to submit themselves to mastectomies. As for the contributions for children's health, the majority of the articles focus their attention upon attention to newborns, in various approaches, excepting research which involves risk factors for malnutrition in children and perceptions of the professional in pediatrics. The publication also counts on the important theoretical reflection that encompasses the attention to maternal-infant health and environmental factors. The Research section begins with an analysis of the impact of migration upon the health of Brazilian women in Australia, pointing out the multiple difficult...