Expanding the Debate: Citizen Participation for the Implementation of the Right to Health in Brazil

Brazil has established a well-known constitutional right to health. Legal scholars have focused largely on one aspect of this right: the role of the courts in enforcing health care access. Less attention has been paid to another aspect: citizens’ right to participate in health planning. Participation is a constituent component of Brazil’s right to health that is intended to guarantee accountability and fair resource distribution for improved population health. In this paper, drawing on constitutional analysis and interviews carried out for my doctoral research, I discuss Brazil’s national-level participatory body, the National Health Council, and its potential for fostering accountability and balancing individual and societal interests in health policy. Effective participation, I contend, is a way to strengthen Brazil’s health system to the benefit of the entire population, rather than only those who have access to the courts. This paper seeks to underline the constitutional requirement of participation as a core element of the realization of the right to health in Brazil and to invite other legal scholars to critically engage with the way in which Brazil’s right to health is implemented.