Abstract

ROCHA, Pedro. Aging with the best of health. Heterogeneity and identity in healthy aging. Forum Sociológico [online]. 2022, n.40, pp.21-33.  Epub July 29, 2022. ISSN 0872-8380.  https://doi.org/10.4000/sociologico.10432.

Older people social actions for health are not only a result of national or transnational policy, like Decade of Healthy Aging (United Nations). They are also from individuals’ learnings throughout life history by interactions with bio-psycho-socio-cultural microstructures. This article aims to understand the everyday life (practice) of healthy aging in older people and thus the social actions that, on a day-to-day scale, are adopted in relation to health, illness, and health care. Data collected by ethnographic research with 10 older people (≥ 65 years of age) about health, illness and healthcare are analyzed by two analytical models framed on historical paradigms of health and the social theories of duality and social action. The main conclusions are older people’s social actions in health are determined by life history and reflexivity; and they resemble to individual dimensions of the healthy aging policy, but they differ in the dimensions that depend on health systems.

Keywords : healthy aging; social determinants of health; social action.

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