The focus of this Working Group, "Social Studies for Health," is a social science perspective on the health conditions of Latin American and Caribbean populations, the social determinants that define them, especially structural inequalities related to class, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and other factors associated with individuals' membership in large social groups, resulting in an unequal distribution of material and symbolic wealth. Similarly, the topic is linked to access to the right to health, the conception, construction, and development of health systems, the development processes and political systems of the region's countries, and their orientations within the framework of major global trends and planetary power relations. Most of the members have belonged to this CLACSO group since its inception in 2013, making it the first of its kind to bring together health professionals with training in Public Health and Social Medicine. This field shares a common perspective from the social sciences to study and understand the processes of health and disease, their distribution, the policies that design the social responses of the State or communities; the impacts of industrial society and predatory neoliberal society on the environment and the transformation of territories, resources and their inhabitants;

The major problems addressed in the Working Group's reflections can be summarized as follows: health inequalities among Latin American and Caribbean populations stemming from the accumulation of historical problems related to poverty, which determine disease patterns; simultaneously, inequalities in access to healthcare determine morbidity and mortality patterns; chronic diseases resulting from development conditions exacerbated by the capitalist system of exploitation and aggravated by neoliberalism, characterized by the intensification of predatory, extractive, and polluting processes, individualization, the breakdown of social networks, and the commodification of social life, all of which threaten the lives and health of individuals in their territories. The effects on health are diverse and well-documented, for example, the relationship between these transformations and cancers; the exponential growth of chronic diseases due to dietary changes and food insecurity linked to the loss of food sovereignty and the cultural erosion of indigenous peoples; and mental health problems resulting from a poor quality of life in terms of health. Climate change with consequences in catastrophes such as the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, fires, etc.

The members of the Working Group bring together the following thematic expertise: Collective Health - Social Determinants - Health Systems - Health Sciences Education; Collective action and social participation in health; Social security, aging and older persons; Health Policies and Systems, Political Economy of Health; Social determinants of health; Digital technologies and health; Policy Analysis in Health, Health Policies and Systems. Participatory Management in Health, Gender and Health;

Social Policy; health and social security policies and systems; International Health and Health Cooperation. Management and evaluation of programs and projects; Organization of Health Services. Health Economics; Public Health - Collective, Occupational Health, Social Movements in Health, Health Systems, Occupational Risk Systems; Health, Gender; Collective Health, Health Policies, Development and Social Protection Policies, Democracy; Health Policy, Health System, Workers' Health; Health policies, systems and practices; Communication and health, Knowledge and health, Gender and health, Violence, Qualitative Research; Public Health Policies/Management of Public Health and Social Policies; Health Policies, Immigration, Agrochemicals and health; Sociology of health, Civil society. Collective action; Health policies, Health financing, Economic policies, Inequalities, Intellectual Property Rights; Mental Health, Social participation in health; Comparative history of health systems and policies and social projection; Equity in health; Territory and health; Cultural heritage of health;

Social protection, Care, Citizen participation, Social policies; Social medicine; Health policy and social security; Intercultural health, Prison health, Qualitative research methodology in health.

The theoretical relevance of this topic lies in recognizing health as a definable field of study within the social sphere, specifically in the expressions of health and illness, and the social response to healthcare, all within the context of socio-historical processes. The analytical perspective can be summarized as the development of what is known as social medicine and Latin American collective health. This field originated as an academic concern and a concern of organized groups beginning in the 1970s, in response to one of the explanatory limitations of analyses based on a biological, medicalized, disease-centered, hospital-based, and physician-centered perspective, and with a training system that reproduces a classist, racist, and exclusionary social order that marginalizes diverse identities.

This current of thought, centered on health and life, care, and its determinants, has drawn on the critical thinking available at each stage of the field's theoretical and practical development. It identifies the dimensions and distribution of the diverse problems that comprise it, while also understanding the functions associated with these problems within so-called medical practice, considered the hegemonic model within the framework of capitalist production and reproduction processes. Especially since the 1980s, during its neoliberal phase, the field has been oriented toward reinforcing the characteristics of the medical model through the influence of international financial institutions on public policy, privatizing public resources and diminishing the direct functions of states. Within the framework of current progressive processes, there are attempts and difficulties in rethinking policies and reclaiming the public sphere, while simultaneously reconstructing a model that responds to the social needs and health demands of organizations, placing the conditions for the social reproduction of life and health of populations at the center of public and social concerns.

Among these sources, one can cite the 4/10/22, 13:18 CLACSO Working Groups https://www.clacso.org.ar/clacso_grupos_de_trabajo/sistema_gt-en-migracion-nuevo-servidor/convocatoria_nuevos_gt_2019/evaluacion_integracion_resultado? 4/13 social medicine of the 19th century that defined the processes of health and disease as

As a consequence of the unhealthy environment and miserable living conditions, social medicine and public health have drawn from critical social sciences, including authors like Marx and Engels, who contributed to the relationship between living conditions and health while also describing the first forms of intervention in the construction of the capitalist state; the Frankfurt School's concept of instrumental reason (Horkheimer); the analytical theory of science versus dialectics (Habermas); and the limits of legitimacy and accumulation (Offe). French post-structuralism and the contributions of Foucault and Bourdieu, as well as Passeron's contributions to the field of education and the reproduction of ideas, have also played a significant role. Among Latin American thinkers, there is already a vast body of theoretical work that has identified problems surrounding economic, political, and ideological relationships in the field of health. In this way, health in general, and its two objects of study—health-disease processes and the social response—are understood within their social determinants. That is to say, the characteristics of the intrinsic object or essential function are determined by the specific and long-term context, based on the functions of capitalist production and reproduction in general, and in this case, in dependent societies.

Other areas of concern include the consequences for work processes, the flexibilization that has meant longer working hours, precarious wages, high levels of technology, and the existence of a parallel economy of drug and human trafficking, among 28 other causes. At the same time, neoliberalism has freed or reduced state controls on companies, which, along with the use of networks and media with market models, have bombarded the population with information.

Intensifying the consumption of processed products has resulted in the loss of productive capacity, a lack of public oversight, unemployment, and increased domestic and social violence, which have deteriorated the health of populations. Furthermore, healthcare systems have become increasingly commodified, with varying degrees of intensity in each country, leading to the destruction and discrediting of public and social security institutions. This has fostered the development of a healthcare industry through the use of workers' contributions, state-funded private insurance, public procurement from private entities, and many other mechanisms. Simultaneously, this has meant a shift in the operation and characteristics of the medical-biological model, replacing medical criteria with economic ones and changing the central agents from physicians to economists, among other changes. Overall, we are facing deteriorating health conditions and dysfunctional healthcare systems. On the other hand, we are witnessing the rise of progressive governments that have improved the living and health conditions of their people, as in the cases of Bolivia and Venezuela before the end of the boycott, while also exploring the difficult path towards decommodification and universal healthcare in local, regional, and national governments.