Environmental health: conceptualization and its applicability

ABSTRACT

The understanding of the term “salubrity” has its roots in social and public health and has since been used in the literature and in public and social policies with the aim of promoting joint actions in public health and environmental issues. However, the term environmental health has been presented with different concepts in several studies published in Brazil. Given this scenario, the objective of this article was to present theoretical and practical subsidies for the proposition of a concept of environmental health and to report the experience regarding its elaboration. For this, the methodology was carried out in two stages: i) systematic review of the application of the term salubrity and the evolution of the concept of environmental healthiness; and ii) proposition of the concept of environmental health by experts. The systematic review resulted in 999 publications, from the period between 1670 and 2021, of which only 12 publications presented the definition explicitly using 6 different concepts. The experts’ discussion culminated in a basic definition of environmental health, which can be extended to each area of study, when necessary. Thus, this research contributed to highlighting the breadth of the salubrity terminology and enabled the elaboration of a concept of Environmental Health. It is noteworthy that the concept of salubrity tends to a constant social construction and, therefore, there is a need for additional discussions about its use.

Keywords:
concept; environmental sanitation; quality of life; salubrity