Prayer, popular education, and health promotion: An experience in the Brazilian Northeast

Abstract

This paper examines the performance of faith healers who have adopted popular education as a base to their practice in a vulnerable community, and it is based on Holliday’s methodological orientation. That is a report of experience – of qualitative aspect – which describes popular health practices during October of 2022. The data found concerns to direct observation and dialogues that happened during some visits to a popular practice’s spot in a community in the Northeast of Brazil where the healer conducts her care actions. Thus, the results present a debate about popular educator, territory, caregiving practices and their impacts to the improvement of health conditions, based on theoretical backgrounds such as The National Health Promotion Policy (PNaPS in Portuguese) and The National Policy of Popular Education in Health according to Brazil’s national health system service (PNEPS-SUS in Portuguese) besides the contributions of Paulo Freire’s dialogic pedagogy theory. Hence, this experience allowed us some critical reflection space, dialogue with the popular educator and specially a process of comprehension of healer’s social roles in a vulnerable community as a health promotion agent which breaks up with hegemonic samples in health literacy and caregiving promotion.