The purpose of this article is to rescue aspects related to the construction of health education as a scientific field. It presents the main changes that have occurred since the early authoritarian and ethnocentric views concerning its target groups to the current proposals for popular education to value popular knowledge, inspired by the thought of Paulo Freire. It argues that the anthropologist's stance in the field, seeking to value the knowledge of the Other as just as legitimate as the academic one, can help health professionals practice dialogic health education for the groups to which it is intended.
Health education; anthropology; public health; ethnography