The paper discusses the development in Brazil of the field of Collective Health field as grounded on three principles similar to those of the policy sciences proposed in the US by H. Laswell in the 1950's: multidisciplinarity, resolution of problems and normativity. Since then, the idea of science applied to the improvement of the policy process spread under the name of policy analysis. While in the USA normativity was seen by political scientists as incompatible with science's core values, in Brazil this convergence originated the academic field of collective health in the 1970's when health reform movement, supported by political parties, labor unions and social movements, developed. With democratic regime and deep changes in the health sector, the use of scientific and analytical knowledge by decision makers got momentum in Brazil as well as the role of the collective health which joined knowledge production and political action. The paper shows that as the field developed, a double process occurred: on one hand, the support for policy oriented studies as well as of Abrasco in the assertion of the multidisciplinary and normative features of the collective health. On the other hand, in the sphere of academic accreditation, the epistemic disputes for scientific legitimating and the predominance of academic legitimacy based on biomedicine criteria affecting the access to financial resources and calling into question the normative and multidisciplinary principles that originated the field.
policy analysis; health policies; Collective Health; multidisciplinarity
