Who can choose to live healthily? Social inequalities and their tensions in health

Abstract

The research analyzes the relationships established between health promotion-prevention interventions and social inequalities and inequities, and how they are perceived by health teams, users of community hospitals, and family health centers in the Los Lagos Region. The research methodology is developed through a descriptive-phenomenological design, and data interpretation incorporates elements of discourse analysis. Data collection techniques include focus groups and semi-structured interviews. The participants are health teams and users of the health network in the Los Lagos Region.The focus of promotion strategies has been on actions aimed at strengthening healthy lifestyles, mainly through healthy eating and physical activity. However, this approach has excluded other dimensions of life that are much more pressing and relevant to the health of communities. Current promotion strategies do not consider situated health actions with territorial relevance due to homogeneous national guidelines, with centralized and vertical standardization measures for health performance and production. This neglects urgent issues related to access to water, environmentally degraded territories, or structural difficulties that must be overcome to live a healthy life, phenomena that exceed the margins of individual freedom and will.