So close and so far: Primary health care and health promotion - From Alma Ata declaration to Ottawa charter

This presentation corroborates various arguments that places together in a common and interdependent perspective the principles and values stated in the Alma Ata Declaration (AAD, 1978) and in the Ottawa Charter (OC, 1986).  Even thought that AAD was more centered on health settings access, defining primary health care (PHC) as the key to achieving Health for All by 2000, and that in the OC the PHC should be positioned as part of an overall strategy for health promotion, disease prevention and population health; both declarations shared similarities on health concept and its determinants, the global situation model analyses and needs for changing the health and quality of life status. Both declarations positioned clearly various dimensions of the social inequities and the enormous gaps between human rights and governments social policies to protect and to promote peoples health and life.

 

Taking the Brazilian Health System Reform, the  recent efforts and difficulties to enhance access and quality to population health care and the current priorities driven to the Family Health Program, the PHC policy and evaluation, one could question how far do the results achieved contributes for the Health Promotion of the Brazilian citizens. Revisiting the constructs, values and principles and reviewing articles and data for social and health analyses, the presentations aims to approach the limits of the Brazilian Health System and Policies to protect and promote health. Urban violence, gender discrimination, environment crises, call for trans-science- driven- polices. Today, more than ever, there is an urgent need to renew commitments and to reinvent radical strategies to enhance social participation and empowerment and to warrantee intersectoral policies.