The Surreptitious Shift of Power in Public Health… Towards a New Horizon

The aim of this work is to clarify, in the first place, the surreptitious shift of power in public health within the context of the present information society. This critical analysis about the paradoxical use of the concept of governance in health care (World Bank vs. reflex-ive governance in Latin America) shows how both models cover up the same privatization of political power. Furthermore, it intends to propose paths towards revisiting the connection between health and power from the perspective of its diversity and complexity, albeit presum-ing equality as an inexorable condition. Along this path, it suggests widening the notion of health to include the collective, inter-culture, the environment and future generations. This novel notion of health is connected to popular power, articulated in collective methods of organization against endemic illnesses and regional social determinants. In general terms, the aim is to defend a collective and inter-cultural notion of health that will permit connecting new and diverse styles of power, under equal conditions, which presume: a- recovering the Social Welfare State and acknowledging new rights in the Constitution (e.g. rights of nature and rights of diversity) that will require health care policies, intercultural and inter-institutional; and b- articulating those distributive public policies with representation of all concerned, acknowledg-ing their rights, their popular power and social capital, aiming at the collective empowerment of every person’s health, including intergenerational health.