Concepts of health and illness among students and teachers from public schools: a survey in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais State, Brazil

RESUMO

Considering the important role of the school in the formation of concepts and as a co-factor responsible for the development of attitudes, it is relevant to investigate what teachers and students think about health and illness. This information enables the verification of trends in health education at school, with a real possibility of understanding the multicausal determination of health and of stimulating helath promotion and disease prevention. On this basis, a study was carried out on the health concepts of teachers and students at four elementary schools in the outskirts of Belo Horizonte, where the authors developed a health education program. The data analysis for the answers given by teachers and students showed an emphasis on the biological and physiological aspects of health in their concepts. The most frequent response of the teachers referred to health as "physcial, bodily and organic equilibrium"(61.0 percent). Among students, the predominant idea of health was the possibility of performing activities (76.8 percent for 3rd and 4th grade students, and 41.2 percent for the 1st and 2nd grade ones), characterized by lists of actions or rules for maintaining health or avoiding illness. One third of the sample associated health with positive feelings and/or sensations. The data demonstrated an agreement of answers between the sampled investigated and North American schoolchildren, in contrast to those by the students from Rio de Janeiro, a fact linked to the historical and sociocultural characteristics of each place. The data also indicated that the majority of the students has a good level of cognitive development, broadening the possibility of working on more complex notions of health and illness, since the teachers can construct broader concepts of greater significance for their own life and the life of the students, which requires their better formation/information.