Language, Literacy, and Health : Discourse in Brazil’s National Health System

Language, Literacy, and Health: Discourse in Brazil´s National Health System analyzes language, literacy, and health as social practices, with a focus on Brazil´s 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 Magalhães and Kênia 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.