Prioridades em saúde: perspectivas históricas e usos da noção de vulnerabilidade

The aim of this study is to analyze historical processes of construction of priorities in the field of Public Health in Brazil, verifying their relationship with biopower, as well as analyzing the ways in which the notion of vulnerability has been used to name priorities in the field of Public Health. This is a qualitative research with documentary sources, based on public documents and literature reviews. We are based on the genealogy proposed by Foucault, which involves verifying the correlation between fields of knowledge, types of normativities and modes of subjectivation. It was found that the Disease, the Case, the Risk, the Crisis, the Danger and the Vulnerability constituted definitions of different priorities in historically dated moments. At each moment, different interventions were launched on individuals and groups, producing different effects on each of them. In certain historically dated moments, certain uses of the notion of vulnerability correlate with biopolitical strategies of inserting life into economic calculations, and in others, with the search for the guarantee of Human Rights in the field of health.