Vulnerabilidade na saúde do adolescente: questões contemporâneas Vulnerability in adolescent health: contemporary issues

Abstract The objective of this exploratory studywith a qualitative approach was to analyze howadolescents perceive reality in terms of vulnera-bility in respect to health. A total of 17 semi-structured interviews were staged with adoles-cents from two elementary-middle (k-8) schoolsin a city in the interior of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Con-tent analysis was used to interpret the data, fromwhich three thematic nuclei emerged. The re-sults revealed that the adolescents understand thecomplex interaction between individual predis-position and health vulnerability, as well as theissues related to social structure, which contrib-utes to strengthening the concept of vulnerabilitybased on individual, social and programmaticlogic. It was established that public policies, pre-vention and care provided during adolescenceshould not be guided by a single reference point,but instead by the plurality of the adolescent in-dividuals concerning vulnerability in their di-mensions, which should be acknowledged in or-der to break with the idea of the universality ofthe process of becoming an adolescent.