SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND HEALTH PROMOTION: STUDY ON METHODS AND TOOLS FOR PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH

Abstract

In September 2015, 193 UN member states adopted a commitment to implement actions related to the 17 Sustainable Development Objectives (SDGs). In November 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) organized its 9th Global Conference on Health Promotion in Shanghai, China, with the theme "Promoting Health in Sustainable Development". The results of this Conference invite reflection on the connections between health and the other 16 ODS, since ODS3 is already explicitly connected to the health sector. It can be said that WHO initiates this intersectoral connection effort by launching at this conference a "mandala" in which it establishes in the inner circle 17 synthetic "health narratives", respectively, for each of the SDGs. The "Shanghai Declaration" established three lines of action to include Health Promotion in Sustainable Development: "Good Governance"; "Healthy Cities" and "Health Literacy". In that direction, in December 2017, WHO organized a consultation meeting in Berlin and established the axis of "social mobilization" as transversal to these three axes, and called on the meeting participants to construct "new narratives of Health Promotion for the XXI century". In this case, the effort must be recognized to indicate formulations and interventions in the field of health promotion, agreed upon by the countries, from a global point of view. However, global perceptions do not always express those narratives that have been formulated at other levels, national, state, much less at the local level. There are authors who value and recognize the local narratives linked to the active participation of communities in the management of global and national programs. From this point of view, these narratives would be "beneficial" and could favor interventions that made sense to people and strenght their partnerships in their territories. The present research draws on a long-standing and established experience of a University of New Mexico (UNM) Research Center that leads community-based participatory research experiments (CBPR). The justification for this research project is therefore the need to expand knowledge and develop theoretical-methodological contributions from the perspective of health promotion, seeking to deepen participatory methodologies. We will use these methods and instruments to explore from the point of view of local actors identified with some of the 17 SDG. This may reveals significant perceptions that have a connection between health and SDG and indicate possible local narratives for Health Promotion in the 21st century, with base and root in specific territories that could dialogue, interfere, exchange, and modify global narratives. The University of New Mexico's School of Public Health and the University of New Mexico reaffirm their technical cooperation, begun in 1999, and seek to continue to develop joint work in the health promotion perspective. We highlight the potential to make possible the exchange of knowledge and experiences between institutions in the areas of teaching and health research. This partnership is also joined by faculty and researchers from the Federal University of São Paulo, which will allow translating, adapting and incorporating some of these tools and methodologies that include subjects involved in the investigative processes in different contexts in Brazil and can also point, in the medium term, to the perspective of future construction of a multicenter project involving other Brazilian universities interested in participatory projects. In this sense, the general objective of this research is to produce narratives and interventions in the field of health promotion articulated to ODS through participatory research tools and methods. (AU)