Tourism and health promotion

from laws and documents to the territory

Abstract

The search for dignity is reflected in the actions and formulations of social movements and other organizational forms, which are gradually taking up the banner of this struggle, equating it to the struggle for health. In the Brazilian case, this relationship is anchored in the Federal Constitution of 1988 and in the organic laws of the Unified Health System, as well as documents on health promotion and surveillance. Added to the scenario described are the over-determinations derived from the tourism phenomenon. On the one hand, there is an eagerness to celebrate the economic results generated by the set of activities that characterize tourism, without much mediation and attention to contradictions. On the other, the growing participation of the phenomenon in the precariousness of work, in the deepening of informal work, in the dynamics of privatization of public spaces, of pollution, of violence against existential diversity, of segregation and gentrification. Nevertheless, the growing visibility surrounding tourism, including resulting in larger budgets for the planning and execution of related actions, makes intersectoral approaches timely. As the health field, within the framework of the aforementioned instruments, is constituted by the principle of intersectorality, an approximation between such frameworks and the characteristic activities of tourism (ACTs) is sought. Methodologically, we started from the constitutional principles and selected laws and documents that are anchored in these principles to construct an approach to tourism as a health promotion device.