Tensions and paradoxes in the processes of social participation in health

Abstract

This article seeks to invite reflection on the advances, setbacks, obstacles and challenges of participation in health. It provides elements of the context in which participatory processes are developed and problematizes, based on the experience of key actors, about the real possibilities of incidence of citizenship in decisions related to health and to build participation processes of a substantive and instituents nature .It seeks to identify tensions and paradoxes that hinder progress in these processes and relates them to inflections of public health policy and civil society’s capacity to be protagonists with a view to finding ways to install practices of a transformational nature.