From the notion of social determination to one of social determinants of health

ABSTRACT The article critically discusses the concept of social determinants of health, conveyed officially by the World Health Organization, from the discussion of its conceptual perspective that differs greatly from that coined around the 1970's by Latin American medical-social current, of social determination of health. The discussion reveals the philosophical principles that underpin the notion of social determinants of health from the arguments based by the positivist sociology of Émile Durkheim. We conclude that such notion identifies a fragmented 'social', that reflects practical and political consequences and it is insufficient to analyze the social changes of contemporaneity.