As dimensões do ensino de Geografia da Saúde no Brasil

Abstract

Context: health geography is a research branch that has been growing more relevant each day, especially in Brazil where the presence of a unified and public health care system is the target for multiple researches, On an effort to understand the reach of the teaching of health geography in the geography courses, a study was developed to evaluate the availability of courses about this theme at the Brazilian public universities. Therefore, an online questionnaire was developed and sent to the coordinators of the geography courses, open ended interviews were also conducted professors of health related subjects about the use of geography content in their classes. Results: Only about a third of the courses offer a subject about health geography and these tend to be elective and unfrequently available. Moreover, professors of health related subjects confirmed that they use techniques and concepts of health geography but did not know about this research area, at least not by this name. Conclusions: Despite the increase in studies on this theme, there is an important gap in health geography teaching in Brazil, probably because it is not properly institutionalized or publicized. Thus, an effort to institutionalize and promote health geography by creating new courses about this subject, as well as actions to integrate geography to health related courses are recommended.