A Community-Based University Extension Programme on Literacy and Health
In 1993, a group of third-year medical students at the Faculdade de Medicina de Botucatu (UNESP), under the guidance of Prof. Eliana Goldfarb Cyrino from the Department of Public Health, established an adult literacy programme in the Jardim Peabiru neighbourhood — a peripheral area of Botucatu. The initiative recognised illiteracy as a structural barrier to healthcare: it compromises adherence to treatment, limits comprehension of diagnoses, and prevents individuals from navigating health systems independently.
The Programme
The Alphabetisation Project for Adults at UNESP Botucatu is a long-running university extension initiative integrating adult education with community health, grounded in Paulo Freire’s dialogical methodology. Conducted through a continuous process of structured educational meetings, the project integrated reading and writing with health-related themes — approaching health education not as the transmission of information, but as a participatory process in which individuals were encouraged to reflect on their own experiences and social context.
Full project documentation is available through the UNESP extension system: PROEX Project ID 10667.
The programme has engaged approximately 95 undergraduate volunteers from Medicine, Nursing, Biology, and Medical Physics, and has operated continuously for over thirty years — adapting to remote delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic. Documented outcomes include participants gaining autonomous capacity to read medication instructions, use banking services, navigate public transport, and access health information independently. Its continuity has been reported in institutional communications from the Faculty of Medicine of Botucatu and in local media, illustrating its sustained relevance within the community.
Academic Publication
The outcomes of this experience were consolidated in a peer-reviewed article derived from the project, indexed in SciELO Brasil and available through the UNESP institutional repository:
Vieira FL et al. Outras leituras da realidade: alfabetização de adultos pela educação em saúde.
Interface — Comunicação, Saúde, Educação, Feb 1998.
Scielo
The article articulates the intersection of adult literacy, popular education, and health promotion within a university extension setting, and remains cited in the programme’s official PROEX documentation as a normative reference for successive cohorts of extension volunteers.
Further Context
This early experience played a central role in shaping the approach to communication in healthcare that has remained a consistent thread across Dr. Vieira’s clinical work — particularly in the understanding that effective care depends on how meaning is constructed between physician and patient, not merely on the information exchanged. For more on how this perspective informs current clinical practice, see the Pain Medicine & Clinical Neuroscience section of this site.
Video report by TV Unesp (2024): undergraduate students from the Faculdade de Medicina de Botucatu conducting weekly health education and literacy sessions at Creche Criança Feliz, Jardim Peabiru — a community initiative in continuous operation since 1993.