Men and health care in the social representations of health professionals Homens e cuidado à saúde nas representações sociais de profissionais de saúde Hombres y el cuidado con la salud en las representaciones sociales de los profesionales de salud

Objective: This study aimed to describe the social representations of health professionals about men and health care, from the content and structure of these representations. Methods: This is a descriptive and qualitative study, having as theoretical and methodological referential the Structural Approach of the Social Representations Theory. It was performed with 104 health professionals of the primary care in the city of Aracaju - SE, through the Technique of Free Word Evocation to collect the data that were processed by the software EVOC 2003. Results: 487 words were evoked in response to the inductive term "men and health care". The results evidenced that the workers have a negative representation of men and care about their health, being the disinterest, fear and careless the most evoked terms. Conclusion: Thus, it is necessary to sensitize health professionals, users and the general population to the negative effects of these conceptions perpetuated in the social imaginary that distance the man of the health care.