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This paper addresses the popular health movement in Nova Iguaçu-RJ in the 1970s and 1980s. Amidst political repression, residents organized themselves to find solutions to various problems, including health problems. Health demands are enhanced both by the dengue epidemic and linkages with the Brazilian health reform and a struggle for democracy. Using documental historical sources from newspapers, health dissemination papers and documents from the House of Oswaldo Cruz-Fiocruz collection, this paper concludes that the example of Nova Iguaçu reveals both the complexity of the process of political opening at the local level and efforts of conducting a health reform where it was needed the most. Resistance on the part of the medical corporation, private interests in health and the existence of a still incipient popular political organization and culture are some of the elements that account for the hardships in advancing the manifest wishes of policies. The specificities of local arenas also point to possible institutional arrangements, sometimes very peculiar and not reproducible in other settings.

This Introduction presents the Forum on the 20 years of experience with the Unified National Health System (SUS), consisting of 3 articles and a postscript. The first article provides a historical overview of the implementation of the SUS, in light of the Constitutional provisions pertaining to health. It discusses the context and main issues underlying the creation of the SUS in Brazil and proposes a renewed linkage between health sector policies and an expanded project for Brazilian society. The second article analyzes the SUS' dynamics; strides in access to and comprehensiveness of care; and challenges for the achievement of its objectives, in light of factors that are external to the system, involving the need for greater politicization of analyses on the issue. The third article approaches social and political processes that developed from 1988 to 2008. It mainly analyzes the history of two collegiate bodies under the SUS at the Federal level: the National Health Council and the Tripartite Inter-Managers' Commission. Despite the complexity identified by the authors and the important obstacles they identify, the reflections indicate that the SUS has been a successful social policy, besides contributing to the consolidation of democracy in Brazil.