White Coats with Blue Collars: Doctors’ Labor Protests and the Struggle for Democracy in Brazil, 1978–1982

Abstract

Studies exploring health and medicine in military Brazil (1964–1985) frequently focus on the struggles of public health activists to advance substantial healthcare reforms during the country's gradual transition to democracy. In the 1960s, the Brazilian dictatorship installed a market-oriented system that outsourced healthcare to private providers, mostly servicing urban and employed benefactors. Without proper government oversight, the healthcare administration was overbilled and national public health indicators lagged. Scholars have highlighted the efforts of the Sanitary Reform Movement (Movimento da Reforma Sanitária) to dismantle the dictatorship's health system. Forming professional associations and assuming leadership positions in governmental agencies, sanitaristas promoted research and policies of collective health, laying the foundations for Brazil's universal healthcare system, established after the return to democracy.