Historically, Brazil’s rural populations have been excluded from public policies in health. With the consecration of the right to health as a duty of the state in the 1988 Constitution, the Unified National Health System Health (SUS) was built on three basic principles: universal access, equity, and comprehensive care in health services, acknowledging and addressing the specificities and peculiarities of the realities experienced by rural, forest-dwelling, and riverine communities.

Based on the need to expand access to health services and acknowledging the cultural and local specificities of these communities in various situations of vulnerability, Brazil created the National Comprehensive Health Policy for Peoples of the Fields, Forests, and Waters (PNSIPCFA), the result of experiences and practices by social movements with the agrarian issue, environmental health, and defense of the Unified National Health System as the platform.

The project, developed by FIOCRUZ Brasília, contributes to strengthening social participation and the leading role of rural populations in establishing their own paths to citizenship.

The project’s objective is to train leaders of trade unions, agrarian reform settlements and camps, and rural women’s movements, strengthening social participation, training, and capacity-building for action in spaces of social control and participation such as health councils, conferences, and committees.