Social inequities and contemporary struggles for collective health in Latin America

As part of a planned series from Global Public Health aimed at exploring both the epistemological and political differences in diverse public health approaches across different geographic and cultural regions, this special issue assembles papers that consider the legacy of the Latin American Social Medicine and Collective Health (LASM-CH) movements, as well as additional examples of contemporary social action for collective health from the region. In this introduction, we review the historical roots of LASM-CH and the movement's primary contributions to research, activism and policy-making over the latter-half of the twentieth century. We also introduce the special issue's contents. Spanning 19 papers, the articles in this special issue offer critical insight into efforts to create more equitable, participatory health regimes in the context of significant social and political change that many of the countries in the region have experienced in recent decades. We argue that as global health worldwide has been pushed to adopt increasingly conservative agendas, recognition of and attention to the legacies of Latin America's epistemological innovations and social movement action in the domain of public health are especially warranted.