Involving citizens in the building of Brazil’s health system

Brazil’s Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS), a universal, rights-based national health system, uses innovative methods to involve ordinary citizens in shaping policy and holding the government accountable for delivery. This short article asks what lessons the SUS offers for future health systems. The authors highlight the dynamics of involving citizens in building the Brazilian health service and consider the processes that occurred at three health conferences, at municipal, sectoral and national levels, between 2003 and 2006.

The article argues that two main factors are important for the successful implementation of rights-based health sector reform:

• political commitment to providing publicly-funded health services for all
  
• innovative institutional experiments to inspire new mechanisms for popular involvement in and accountability of health service provision.