Community Participation in Health: a Narrative Review of Academic Production Based on Social Inequalities

This review aims to locate historically the developments of the concept of community participation in health, and its main aspects just as they have developed over the last decades. To do so, an analytical review is made of the existing main debates and controversies, startig with the origin and the development of community participation. To that end, the sociohistorical process of construction and conceptual development can be understood. The second part explores the conformation of a subfield within the social sciences that tries to approach community participation from the perspective of networks, starting from the paradigm of complexity. After evidencing some of the gaps within the literature that deals with the topic, the authors develop an analytical approach of community participation, which attempts to problematize the distinction between urbanity and rurality. The analysis centers its interest in the social actors, the context, the relations of power, the concept of community, and the interactions that occur within it.