Traditional and complementary medicine as health promotion technology in Brazil

Conventional medicine-understood as a medicalized and commodified model based on biomedical and natural hard sciences that provide legitimization and institutionalism to its practices-is hegemonic in health systems. This article examines interfaces between health promotion (HP) and traditional and complementary medicine (T&CM), especially as found in the Brazilian Health System (SUS). In order to analyze the tensions between paradigms that strive for scientific authority in public policies and practices, especially those related to SUS, we rely on Bourdieu's concept of scientific field. Our guidelines to identify the principles and values that mark the HP and T&CM movements were official documents (policies) and scientific publications on the subject. Analysis showed that the underlying values and principles of HP and T&CM converge and add complexity to the health model and its praxis-HP with its theoretical advances and T&CM with its conceptually coherent practices. Both movements recognize the multidimensional and indivisible nature of 'being' and its social and environmental determination. Together, they strengthen the possibilities of offering practices based on HP principles, such as holism, integrality, sustainability, empowerment, autonomy, social participation and others. This encounter offers a promising path for strengthening resistance against the individualized and monetized 'out-of-pocket' medicine model, and favors the reorientation of primary health care toward a more democratic and health-promoting model for SUS.