The citizen participation in Catalan public health: concept, analysis and proposal

Abstract

The adjective “participative”, together with the noun democracy, indicates an attempt of the citizenship to actively participate in the social life processes beyond the representative democracy. Health and the Public Health System is maybe one of these subjects that the most of the people is interested in. ¿What happens with people’s mechanisms of participation? We analyze the levels of participation that the current legislation considers and/or that are working in Catalonia at present, under the operational, legal and conceptual view, and according to this analysis, we identify a series of conclusions, with its corresponding proposals in every area. These are reasonable proposals that always include a health concept that underlines the implication of the community as a whole, and also of every concrete individual, in the management of the Health System and their own health. This way we give operational action to this concept of participation, so that it does not become a pure theoretical construction.