Health Promotion Practices and Michel Foucault: A Scoping Review

To analyze Health Promotion (HP) practices in different settings worldwide, presented in studies that employed the Foucauldian framework.

Scoping review performed on LILACS, MEDLINE, IBECS, BDENF, SciELO, CINAHL, Embase, Web of Science, and Scopus databases.

We included original articles, review articles, reflection articles, and case studies published in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, which addressed HP practices, analyzed using the Foucauldian framework.

In the numerical synthesis, the characteristics of the included studies were described: number of studies, types of method, year of publication, characteristics of the study population, origin countries, and the HP practices addressed in the articles. The thematic synthesis was organized according to the nature of the HP practices presented and the Foucauldian analysis matrix used.

The review covered 34 studies, published between 2006 and 2019, whose analysis resulted in 2 thematic synthesis: 1) HP as a biopolitical strategy in the neoliberal context; 2) HP as an expression of resistance and counter-conduct, presenting tensions, struggles, and power games.

The field of HP mostly consists of governmentality practices that reinforce the neoliberal health perspective. Some practices show resistance and counter-conduct in the face of governmentality practices, which explains the power relationships in the field of HP.