Social Inequities and Contemporary Struggles for Collective Health in Latin America

This book explores the legacy of the Latin American Social Medicine and Collective Health (LASM-CH) movements and other key approaches-including human rights activism and popular opposition to neoliberal governance-that have each distinguished the struggle for collective health in Latin America during the twentieth and now into the twnety-first century. At a time when global health has been pushed to adopt increasingly conservative agendas in the wake of global financial crisis and amidst the rise of radical-right populist politics, attention to the legacies of Latin America's epistemological innovations and social movement action are especially warranted. This collection addresses three crosscutting themes: First, how LASM-CH perspectives have taken root as an element of international cooperation and solidarity in the health arena in the region and beyond, into the twenty-firstcentury. Second, how LASM-CH perspectives have been incorporated and restyled into major contemporary health system reforms in the region. Third, how elements of the LASM-CH legacy mark contemporary health social movements in the region, alongside additional key influences on collective action for health at present.
Working at the nexus of activism, policy, and health equity, this multidisciplinary collection offers new perspective on struggles for justice in twenty-first-century Latin America. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Global Public Health.

Emily E. Vasquez is in the Department of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, New York, NY, USA. Amaya Perez-Brumer is at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, Canada. Richard G. Parker holds appointments at Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association.

Introduction: Social inequities and contemporary struggles for collective health in Latin America 1. Social Medicine and International Expert Networks in Latin America, 1930-1945 2. Social medicine, feminism and the politics of population: From transnational knowledge networks to national social movements in Brazil and Mexico 3. Latin American social medicine across borders: South-South cooperation and the making of health solidarity 4. Collective Health and Regional Integration in Latin America: An opportunity for building a new international health agenda 5. Revisiting the social determinants of health agenda from the global South 6. Theoretical underpinnings of state institutionalisation of inclusion and struggles in collective health in Latin America 7. History and challenges of Brazilian social movements for the achievement of the right to adequate food 8. La Revolución Ciudadana and social medicine: Undermining community in the state provision of health care in Ecuador 9. Social transformation, collective health and community-based arts: 'Buen Vivir' and Ecuador's social circus programme 10. 'Live Beautiful, Live Well' ('Vivir Bonito, Vivir Bien') in Nicaragua: Environmental health citizenship in a post neoliberal context 11. Rites of Resistance: Sex Workers' Fight to Maintain Rights and Pleasure in the Centre of the Response to HIV in Brazil 12. Confluent paths: Research and community participation to protect the right to health among transgender women in Peru 13. Santo Domingo's LGBT social movement: At the crossroads of HIV and LGBT activism 14. Social Class for Collective Health Research: A Conceptual and Empirical Challenge 15. Struggles for the right to health at work in Colombia: The case of associations of workers with work-related illnesses 16. The mental health users' movement in Argentina from the perspective of Latin American Collective Health 17. Global frameworks, local strategies: Women's rights, health, and the tobacco control movement in Argentina 18. The decriminalisation of abortion in Colombia as cautionary tale. Social movements, numbers and socio-technical struggles in the promotion of health as a right 19. Struggles for maintenance: Patient activism and dialysis dilemmas amidst a global diabetes epidemic