[Intercultural health: elements to the construction of its conceptual bases]

Over the past few years, intercultural health has become an emerging issue in health policy. Intercultural health is an approach to create a better communication between patients and providers. In the short term, this approach incorporates patient's culture background in health care, improving intercultural communication strategies to generate, in the long term, a health system adapted to the medical culture of patients. This article explores the underlying concepts in the intercultural health approach, such as cultural diversity and medical systems as complex models of thoughts and behaviors.