Collective Health and Regional Integration in Latin America: an opportunity for building a new international health agenda

MARÍA BELÉN HERRERO; JORGELINA LOZA; MARCELA BELARDO

Global Public Health

Routledge Taylor & Francis

Año: 2019 vol. 14 p. 1 - 12

1744-1692

Este artículo fue seleccionado y publicado para un número especial sobre la temática, del cual participaron referentes en el campo "Special Issue: Social inequities and contemporary struggles for collective health in Latin America; Guest Editors: Emily E. Vasquez, Amaya Perez-Brumer, and Richard G. Parker"Abstract Hand in hand with the rise of health as part of the global agenda, regional integration also appeared as a fundamental component to the success of large-scale health initiatives. New health coalitions and policies were formed in order to tackle health issues and the determinants of health, internationally and inter-regionally, reflecting the early values and the historical legacy of the Latin American social medicine tradition. Regional cooperation searched for renewed collective goals, norms, and practices. The struggle for collective health and social medicine was a window of opportunity to step up regional cooperation in Latin America. Latin America features a very regional architecture characterised by the proliferation and overlapping of regional organisations. Yet given the precedents in regional cooperation dating back to the early XX century, all have incorporated the right to health, tracing distinctions and commonalities with strategies to social medicine/social epidemiology. From this theoretical starting point, we propose an analysis of the experience of the South American Union of Nations through a twofold objective. Firstly we want to explore the legacy of long-standing efforts in the region that address the social and political dimensions of health, those associated with the Latin American Social Medicine and Sanitary Health movements. Secondly, we will carry out an analysis of the regional-level politics and policy, and the role of the regional level as a hinge in the construction of a health agenda and the principles of South-South cooperation. We will base our reflections on an analysis of primary and secondary data, and the collection of qualitative and quantitative data.We hope this article can help to understand the principles on which international health is embedded in Latin America and the role that regional organizations as UNASUR have in laying the foundations for an international health and the challenges of south?south cooperation.