Objective:

To identify the meanings that young students attribute to conceptions and practices of selfcare in health from a cultural approach.

Methodology:

The methodology addressed was qualitative from an ethnographic orientation, based on 23 in-depth interviews to young students from three basic high school education institutions in Manizales. The analysis highlights the selection of trends and the initial descriptive codes, which gave place to subcategories and categories that, nurtured the construction of meanings that participants attribute to conceptions and practices face up to self-care in health.

Results:

The meanings conceived as a symbolic construction that participants attribute to self-care in health were described from their heterogeneity, because the conceptions and practices arise from the cultural. Self-care of health is perceived as a family matter, from a perspective of co-responsibility and parental support. The emergence of the category of work as a practice stresses the subjective world of youth, generating contradictions, motivations, expectations and new subjective meanings. However, the nature of these works in precarious circumstances shows the difficulties in their material, social, cultural and symbolic conditions of life.

Conclusions:

The participants construct the meanings of self-care in health from the mobilization of knowledge and practices from the ideal of family matter, seen as parental support. The emergent category of work is a producer of new meanings, those that reveal precarious material, social and symbolic conditions associated with the youthful experiential connection.

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