Main description:

Language, Literacy, and Health: Discourse in Brazils National Health System analyzes language, literacy, and health as social practices, with a focus on Brazils national health system, the Unified Health System (SUS). The SUS was established in the 1990s, offering free consultations, health promotion activities, and home visits by a professional team to the Brazilian population, and of particular interest is the Family Health Strategy program. This book is based on research conducted in two different Brazilian regions, the Northeast and the Southeast. Izabel Magalhaes and Kenia Lara da Silva discuss language and literacy as discourse-a very important dimension of health practice-and different uses of texts, including multimodal texts. The research and analysis, and the authors' ethnographic approach, bring to light some issues with SUS practices, and the authors suggest improvements. The book contributes to the debate about language and literacy in health practices, in which patients are partly responsible for keeping well.

Contents:

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part 1: The Ethnographic-Discursive Method, the Research Projects and the Theoretical Approach

Chapter 1: The Ethnographic-Discursive Method: Four Research Projects in Brazil

Chapter 2: Discourse Analysis, Literacy Studies and Multimodality: Health Practice and the Therapeutic Bond

Part 2: Health Literacies

Chapter 3: Contributions of the Study of Language and Literacy as a Social Practice to Health

Chapter 4: Literacy Practices and Literacy Events in Health

Chapter 5: Texts and Narratives in Healthcare

Part 3: Evaluation and Discursive Representation in Healthcare

Chapter 6: Patients' Evaluations

Chapter 7: Health Professionals' Evaluations

Chapter 8: Health Discourses and Practices on the Ground

Part 4: Case Studies in Language and Health

Chapter 9: Case Study 1: Health Professionals

Chapter 10: Case Study 2: Patients

Part 5: Social Change in Health Practice

Chapter 11: Health Professional Education: The Education of the Nursing Technician and the Representation of the Unified Health System (SUS)

Chapter 12: Making Patients Responsible for their Health: The Construction of Health Discourse in a Community of Belo Horizonte

Conclusion

References

About the Authors