A model to build up: A methodological proposal to address the comparative study of the history of public health, health professions and their two-way relationships with society

The article shows the theoretical and methodological proposal that, grounded in previous studies, was built during the first phase of a long-term project that seeks to develop a comparative history of medicine and public health in Latin America. To expose this proposal, it initially develops a brief historiographical overview of the literature on the history of medicine and public health in Latin America; then it arises a reconfiguration of the concept of "health field" based on a critical analysis of the concept, that begins to appear as a framework for a long term Social Studies of Health Research Program in the Universidad del Rosario, in which this comparative proposal is articulated; and, in a third moment, it presents the general outlines of the proposal. As final result a matrix to be used in the second phase of the comparative project of the history of medicine and public health in Latin America is presented. It was structured upon all the theoretical and methodological elements discussed in this historiography study. This matrix was composed by nine attributes and their corresponding categories that will be used as a guide to gather the historical records and to do the respective analysis and comparison.