Salud Colectiva

Photo: Peter H | Translated by Nazarena Galeano | Last updated:: 02/02/2022

Although Salud Colectiva published its first issue in April 2005, the journal is the result of a process that began during the Jornadas de Atención Primaria de la Salud [Conferences on Primary Health Care] carried out in Argentina between 1987 and 1993. These conferences were organized by Hugo Spinelli, Carmen Ferrer, Ana Diez Roux and Marcio Alazraqui, among other colleagues, based on their experience in the Comisión Nacional de Médicos Residentes (CONAMER) [National Commission of Medical Residents] and inspired by the words of the first Minister of Health of Argentina, Dr. Ramón Carrillo:

"Faced with the diseases caused by misery, faced with the people’s sorrow, anguish and social misfortune, microbes, as causes of disease, are poor causes."

These conferences were recognized in the Pan American Health Organization's report Health Conditions in the Americas, published in 1994, as one of two activities carried out in the Americas inscribed in "social movements specifically oriented to the field of health" at a national level. Among the 90 international conference speakers that participated were personalities such as Giovanni Berlinguer, Eduardo Menéndez, Mario Testa, Rolando García, Sonia Fleury, Gastão Wagner de Sousa Campos, Juan Samaja, Susana Belmatino, Aldo Ferrer, Carlos Rodríguez, Floreal Ferrara, Carlos Bloch, Hilario Ferrero, Susana Zomosa, Alicia Gillone, Sylvia Bermann, Emiliano Galende, Vicente Galli, Carlos Casinelli, Ruben Efron, Pedro de Sarrasqueta, Mario Hamilton, David Capistrano, Saul Franco, Catalina Eibenschutz, Elsa Lobo, Sebatião Loureiro, and María Urbaneja. Also, unions such as the Asociación Trabajadores del Estado (ATE) and the Central de Trabajadores de la Argentina (CTA), organizations such as the World Council of Churches, the Pan American Health Organization, UNICEF, and delegations from Brazil, Uruguay and Chile took part each year in the conference. The books published after each conference laid the basis for the path in scientific publishing that would later be taken.

At these conferences, the conceptual framework in which the journal is currently inscribed began to be formulated:

• Collective health is a field of practices.
• The health-disease-care process has a sociocultural and historical dimension.
• There is a commitment to the production of knowledge for action, to the elimination of health inequalities, and to the struggle for social inclusion and the construction of social citizenship.

These conceptions are informed, among others, by the ideas of Johann Peter Frank (1745-1821), Rudolf Virchow (1812-1902) and Henry Sigerist (1891-1957); the proposals of Salvador Allende (1908-1973) and the Chilean National Health System after 1952; the Italian health movement started in the 1960s with Franco Basaglia (1924-1980), Giulio Maccacaro (1924-1977), Giovanni Berlinguer (1924-), and the achievements of Italian Health Reform and Psychiatric Reform; Juan César García (1932-1984) and the Latin American Social Medicine Movement, initiated in the 1970s; and the Brazilian Health Reform (1988).

In 1993, under the coordination of Hugo Spinelli, the book collection Salud Colectiva was created under the editorial seal of Lugar Editorial. Over the years, this collection has brought together important Latin American thinkers, having published over 50 titles.

In 1996, the coffee shop “La Ópera,” situated on the corner of Callao y Corrientes in the city of Buenos Aires, was the site at which Leonardo Werthein brought Ana Jaramillo (founder of the Universidad Nacional de Lanús) and Hugo Spinelli together for the first time. There they planned the creation of the Master's Degree Program in Epidemiology, Management and Health Policies. The first cohort began in 1998, and the Master's Program still today has among its professors many of the organizers and conference panelists of the Jornadas de Atención Primaria de la Salud.

At the end of 2003, in the bar “La Esquina de Garufa” in the heart of Buenos Aires, Eduardo Menéndez, professor and researcher of the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS) in Mexico, proposed the need to create a scientific journal for critical thought in health in Spanish that could continue the important work carried out from 1978 to 2002 by the journal Cuadernos Médico Sociales in Rosario.

Thus was born Salud Colectiva, as the result of a long history of editorial construction that began in 1987 and was improved upon and amplified over the course of 18 years. This made it possible to for the first issue in 2005 to be published with an editorial board representative of the region. It was first published with the support of Asociación Civil Salud Colectiva - Centro de Estudios para la Salud, but in 2007 the Universidad Nacional de Lanús took full responsibility for the project. This was a decisive change that made it possible to overcome financial hurdles and assure the journal's later continuity and growth.

Today the journal is based in the Instituto de Salud Colectiva (Leonardo Werthein Building) of the Universidad Nacional de Lanús, inaugurated July 7, 2011.