Introduction:

This article analyzes the development of the Estudio sobre Salud y Educación Médica (ESSEM), an initiative of the Secretaría de Salud de la Nación Argentina dedicated to the production of statistical data on the health system that was developed during the government of the so-called Revolución Argentina (1966-1973).

Development:

The ESSEM allows us to account the way in which the discourse of health planning crystallized in the policies of the Secretary of Public Health. Through the analysis of documents and interviews, different dimensions of the object are studied: the political bets that motivated it, the professional groups involved, their technical characteristics, the conceptions about the state health intervention and the broader political context in which they were inserted. Finally, we focus on the limitations that existed in its implementation, as well as the valuation of some transformations that persisted in other institutional forms.

Conclusions:

The development of ESSEM shows the importance of the discourse of health planning carried out by sanitarians, a professional group that has played a leading role in health policies since the second postwar period. In its content, we find in the ESSEM the influence of a health agenda of the time, driven, to a large extent, by international organizations such as Pan American Health Organization. And at the same time, it shows how health policy was losing positions within the broader political game of social assistance policies towards the end of the period analyzed.

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