ICML 9

9º Congreso Mundial de Información en Salud y Bibliotecas

Salvador, Bahia - Brasil, 20 a 23 de septiembre de 2005

BVS4

4a. Reunión de Coordinación Regional de la BVS

19 y 20 de septiembre de 2005

Contexts: the challenges of a communication research method in Aids prevention

Participantes:
  • Vice Diretora de Ensino, Centro de Informação Científica e Tecnológica, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Ministério da Saúde  - Brasil
  • Pesquisadora, Departamento de Comunicação e Saúde, Centro Informação Científica e Tecnológica, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz  - Brasil

From February 2002 to February 2004 we carried out a method of assessment of communication strategies in health, taking Aids prevention and control as subject, focusing teenagers and youth from two low-income suburbs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Curicica and Lins de Vasconcelos. The survey had an interdisciplinary edge, articulating several levels of production and socialization of knowledge and practices. It was coordinated by Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, in partnership with the Communication College of Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro and Rio de Janeiro health agency (Secretaria Municipal de Saúde). The survey was financed by the Ministry of Health – National Program for Sexually Transmitted Diseases /Aids, with Unesco support.

The method associated a process of youth workshop, with an analysis of the practices and texts produced by them; it assessed how official informations and messages on health intertwine in the social practice with the informations, values and concepts originated fro m other sources, apart from identifying the way how youth appropriate the discourses about Aids prevention.

The raw material of the survey were the circulating discourses, produced in specific contexts. In this approach, context is the vital concept, because it brings up multiples and heterogeneous voices and stories. In this work we gave priority to the Public Health context, the theoretical context of Communication and Health, the context of Aids prevention, the contexts of the surveyed areas, and the existential and situation contexts of the participants in the survey – social and dynamics producers.
The implementation of the work and the analysis of its results showed how the contexts have changed the course of the survey, specially the local contexts and the health services contexts. At the same time they demanded the reshaping of the survey method and reinforced its starting point, that is, the senses are not ready, not in the messages and offered informations, not in the reception fie ld. The senses are shaped in the meeting (and also disbanding) space  among them, of the interlocution e, thus, are always contextual.