With the purpose of investigating, in the perspective of Health promotion and disease prevention, concepts about sanitation and their relation to Health and environment in the field of national scientific production, conceptual and practical approaches on the theme and related to sanitation were analyzed: the articulation between politics, institutions and actions involving sanitation; the technical and non-technical participations in sanitation actions; the sanity and environmental education; the adaptability of sanitation actions. The characterization of the production sources was made through the identification of the publication, the target geographical regions of the study, among others aspects. The results shows that the preventive approaches are hegemonic, reducing the capacity of articulation between policy, institutions and actions, limiting the conceptions of adaptation, education and restricting the participation of population in the decisions about life conditions interventions. At the same time, we concluded that the scientific production on the themes under investigation is increasing and is concentrated in certain journals and limited to the study of specific geographic regions of the country.
health promotion; disease prevention; sanitation; environmental health; scientific production
