Health Education in Brazil: an analysis of scientific production between 2010 and 2020

Abstract

Health education is defined as any production of knowledge aimed at professional training to work in health, but it is marked by confusion in the use of terms that involve its theoretical foundation. We mapped the scientific production on Health Education in Brazil between 2010 and 2020, through bibliometric review with collection in three databases (Web of Science, MEDLINE and Scopus) and use of the Bibliometrix software. The analysis shows an increase in publications on the theme of health education in the national territory in the period described. The theme shows international influence in citations, absence of specific descriptors, inappropriate use of the most convenient descriptors and presence of research networks. The results obtained create a safe comparison framework for future studies that analyze the evolution of health education in Brazil and the need to create a theme-specific descriptor in the DeCS/MeSH system.