Abstract
To rescue and systematize the different positions that shaped the path of the construction of the permanent education in health concept, the article aims to review the discussions carried out by the Pan American Health Organization in the period ranging from 1974 to 2002 with regard to health education practices to understand the lines of force, intentionalities, and power games involved in this debate. Documental and bibliographical research was carried out using the conceptual matrix notion as an analytical reference. The results present the elements that comprise these matrices and their respective emergency contexts, which corroborate the existence of two conceptual matrices in the production of the Pan American Health Organization, namely continuing education in health and permanent health education, respectively, from 1974 to 1984 and from 1985 to 2002. It is argued that the expansion and reconfiguration of the conceptual plan provided by the second matrix, largely centered on the pedagogical method, faces limitations that we can correlate not only with the redirection of the institution's agenda, but also with the experience of implementing the National Policy for Permanent Education in Health and the contradictions that marked the path followed by the management of the work of the Unified Health System.
Keywords
continuing education; permanent education; Pan-American Health Organization; vocational education; public health