The Long-Standing Profession of Public Health Professional Now Regulated in the Country

The profession of sanitation worker has existed for a long time. They are well-known public health professionals who have made a very important contribution to the field of public health. At USP, the Faculty of Public Health is responsible for training public health professionals in specialization and postgraduate courses, in addition to experiences in other units and universities of residences in this area, not to mention the countless health professionals who work in the SUS and They perform the function with sporadic experience in public careers in some States, such as the now extinct public health doctor in the State of São Paulo, recalls Marília Louvison. “These professionals occupied vacancies in the management of basic health units and in epidemiological and health surveillance of the SUS. In recent years, USP’s Faculty of Public Health and several other federal universities across the country have created bachelor’s degrees in public health or collective health and we currently also train public health professionals at the undergraduate level. Specifically and particularly, for these graduates as their first degree, the new legislation creates the possibility of a professional registration regulated by the SUS, which will greatly contribute to their professional placement. For all of us, health professionals, the new law makes us proud and brings public recognition from society to a profession of such great importance that, particularly after the pandemic, had the visibility of those who are present in the lives of all citizens.”

The courses began more than ten years ago at USP. The profession is already considered a recognized occupation and is carried out by professionals with specialization in public health. A process of maturation of this need was necessary, including the struggle of professionals graduating from bachelor’s degrees and the courses themselves that culminated in this possibility. The professor highlights that “it was important to build this legislation in an inclusive way, recognizing all health professionals who already work in Brazil and trained in the SUS through undergraduate, postgraduate, residency and specialization. We are all health workers. Furthermore, it was necessary to build the possibility of a regulatory process at the governmental level, considering that it is a profession with its own characteristics, more in the field of collective actions than the individual actions of a liberal professional. These courses also had their curricular guidelines approved last year, bringing a better legal regulatory framework for the courses and the professionals who graduated from them and we understand that this entire process is of great importance for the field of public health throughout Brazil”.

The course

This professional, particularly trained at undergraduate level, has a recommended minimum workload of 3,200 hours. The bachelor’s degree in Public Health at USP meets this requirement and is offered in the afternoon and on Saturdays in four years. The course is organized into five axes, which are the priority areas of public health and the field of collective health: life sciences; social and human sciences; policy, planning and management; epidemiology; and information systems and environmental health. It has disciplines related to both the humanities and biological and exact sciences, and the professional can work in the area of ​​public health, primarily in the public sector, in the field of public policies, but also in the private sector, in areas related to public health. 

The courses are designed to train professionals who can work in any management and surveillance space, in territories and social movements, in teams, programs, services and health systems, in the area of ​​health information and surveillance, contributing to the reduction of inequalities and the expansion of the concept of health, important premises of the Brazilian health reform and the construction of the SUS. 

Currently, all professionals who have qualified in this sense, worked in the SUS in areas that required this knowledge and were trained throughout practice, and those who have completed specialization, residency, postgraduate and undergraduate courses in public health, work as public health professionals. or public health. With the new law, the regulatory apparatus will be created for the profession’s registration mechanisms, in compliance with the law now in progress. The performance will depend on where the professional carries out his activities. The competencies of this professional are related to the planning and management of collective health activities in the public and private sphere, information and monitoring of health risks, such as health problems and epidemics, work in areas of health surveillance, such as epidemiological and health surveillance, and health regulation, among many others.