[Health education: knowledge, social representation, and illness].
This article discusses the theory and practice of health and education, beginning with the notion of the hegemony (in health education practice) of strategies linked to the notion that to grasp established knowledge always leads to the acquisition of new behaviors and practices. Five different axioms have oriented education and health practices, either juxtaposed or at different moments: (1) the notion of overcoming the determination of knowledge over practices; (2) the determination of representations over practices; (3) the analysis of representations within the traditional framework of right and wrong; (4) reciprocity between representations and practices; and (5) the importance of considering practices amenable to re-elaboration through representations, thus situating experience in understanding subjects' illness processes, as well as the way subjects culturally construct illness. The article highlights the need for a link between social representations and illness-as-experience in health education practices.
Gazzinelli
Maria Flávia
MF
Escola de Enfermagem, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. flavia@enf.ufmg.br
Gazzinelli
Andréa
A
Reis
Dener Carlos dos
DC
Penna
Cláudia Maria de Mattos
CM
D004194:Disease / Q000523:psychology*; D006266:Health Education; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D012938:Social Perception