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The use of Complementary and Integrative Practices (CIP) is on the increase and its institutionalization in Primary Health Care (PHC) is a challenge. This article discusses the use, care, and policies of CIP at international and national levels found in the indexed literature. A review of the literature in PubMed/Medline and the Virtual Health Library was conducted using the key search words "Homeopathy", "Acupuncture", "Herbal Medicine", "Body Practices", "Primary Health Care" and other related terms in English, Spanish and Portuguese between 2002 and 2011. The use in the literature of CIP for the treatment of specific diseases from a biomedical perspective was observed, as well as evaluations of its use for the treatment of specific diseases focused on the reaction of the users and professionals and the analysis of the political, economic and social viability of CIP in health services. The conclusion drawn is that what is predominant in the literature is the quest for the scientific validation of CIP and a biomedical methodological bias in the designs of the studies, which does not contribute to clarifying the potential care of CIP in PHC.

This study aims to describe and analyze the presence of social scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists in the field of public health. A survey by the Lattes Curriculum and sites of Medical Colleges, Institutes of Health Research Collective, seeking professionals who work in healthcare and have done some stage of their training in the areas of social sciences. In confluence with Norbert Elias' concepts of social networks and configuration of interdependence it was used fuzzy logic, and the tool free statistical software R version 2.12.0 which enabled a graphic representation of social scientists interdependence in the field of social sciences-health-social sciences. A total of 238 professionals were ready in 6 distinct clusters according to the distance or closer of each professional in relation to public health and social sciences. The work was shown with great analytical and graphical representation possibilities for social sciences of health, in using this innovative quantitative methodology.

Among the various ways of adopting the biographical approach, we used the curriculum vitaes (CVs) of Brazilian researchers who work as social scientists in health as our research material. These CVs are part of the Lattes Platform of CNPq - the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, which includes Research and Institutional Directories. We analyzed 238 CVs for this study. The CVs contain, among other things, the following information: professional qualifications, activities and projects, academic production, participation in panels for the evaluation of theses and dissertations, research centers and laboratories and a summarized autobiography. In this work there is a brief review of the importance of autobiography for the social sciences, emphasizing the CV as a form of "autobiographical practice." We highlight some results, such as it being a group consisting predominantly of women, graduates in social sciences, anthropology, sociology or political science, with postgraduate degrees. The highest concentration of social scientists is located in Brazil's southern and southeastern regions. In some institutions the main activities of social scientists are as teachers and researchers with great thematic diversity in research.

This article discusses the field of Collective Health from the disciplines that structure the curriculum of the Collective Health area postgraduate courses in 2006. From the database of programs, including master's, doctoral and professional masters were classified 1,171 subjects, in what we call disciplinary fields, linking this to the P. Bourdieu's notion of champ (field). Twenty-eight disciplinary fields were described, in three large groups. It was concluded that the field of collective health has a wide range of disciplinary fields, especially the frequency: Epidemiology (16%), Humanities and Social Sciences in Health (7.9%); Curriculum (7.9%); Systems and Health Services (7.4%), Environment and Health (7.2%) Health Policies (6.3%).

The article analyses the literature on curriculum and its impact on the field of public health. This analysis aims to locate the specific lines of theoretical developments of the curriculum in order to establish a theoretical framework and conceptual study to the curricula of public health in graduate courses. The main source of data is bibliographic, national and international. It was concluded that the formulation of a 'curriculum as fact' and a 'curriculum as practice' is interesting as starting point for analyzing the structure and process of formation of the curricula of graduate health courses. Other points concern the need to formalize that the curriculum should be based on a framework to define the characteristics that distinguish the contents and methodology of the areas, classically known as social science, epidemiology and planning. On the other hand, establishing a framework that supports inclusion of new areas and which parameters are established between the curriculum of undergraduate and postgraduate studies in public health.