Nurses in Public Health have the mission to mobilize the community-based organizations for the implementation of national health programmes. The work engages a proximity that will allow them to seize the details of a concrete reality, but which only a certain critical distance will lead to place them in a context of global meaning. A systematization of experiences presents the community evaluative research as a methodological opportunity for health and nursing sciences. The perspective is particularly relevant for health professional practices, especially in contexts of unpredictability and of sociopolitical conflicts of verticality among multiple actors involved in a public health program. The field insertion in marginalized districts and the work with community groups favor the inclusion of the popular civil society perspective in evaluations of AIDS preventive actions and other public health programmes.
Public and Community Health; Popular Civil Society; Social Movements; Community Evaluative Research; Nursing; Sociopolitical Verticality; Unpredictability; Aids Prevention