A Note from a Former Student
I first met Professor Cyrino in 1994, during my first year of medical school at UNESP Botucatu. She was the supervisor of a health education project in which I participated actively — my earliest exposure to the idea that medicine is practised not only in consulting rooms but in the social and political conditions that shape illness and access to care. She subsequently became my orientadora for my scientific initiation research, and my professor in the collective health curriculum throughout my undergraduate years.
Her influence on my medical formation was decisive in ways that were not fully apparent to me at the time. The clinical choices I later made — towards primary care, family medicine, and an engagement with health systems beyond clinical practice — were shaped in large part by what I understood, working alongside her, about what medicine is for. The emphasis she placed on the social dimensions of health, on the educator’s responsibility towards students and communities alike, and on the SUS as a political project worth defending, became reference points I have carried through more than thirty years of practice.
In the years that followed, she did me the honour of inviting me to contribute lectures to the medical undergraduate programme and to the postgraduate programme in family health. Those invitations were themselves a lesson in how she understood the relationship between teachers and former students: not as hierarchy that closes once a degree is conferred, but as a continuing conversation about medicine and its responsibilities.
This page is an acknowledgement of a debt that cannot be fully repaid.
Overview
Eliana Goldfarb Cyrino is Full Professor (Professora Titular) in the Department of Public Health at the Faculdade de Medicina de Botucatu (FMB), UNESP — Universidade Estadual Paulista, where she has built a career at the intersection of medical education, collective health, and primary care. A physician trained in preventive and social medicine, she holds postgraduate degrees from USP, UNESP, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, and has dedicated her professional life to transforming how health professionals are educated and how medicine relates to communities.
Her ORCID identifier is 0000-0002-6526-3528. Her Lattes curriculum is registered under ID 7172724495907723.
Biography
Born in 1959, Eliana Goldfarb Cyrino describes herself as a woman, mother, grandmother, public university professor, physician, and activist for collective health and human rights — a self-portrait that captures both the personal and political dimensions of a career spanning more than four decades in Brazilian medicine and public health.
She completed her medical degree in 1982 at the Faculdade de Medicina de Jundiaí, followed by a residency in Preventive and Social Medicine at FMB, UNESP in Botucatu. She subsequently pursued two master’s degrees: one in Preventive and Social Medicine at the Faculdade de Medicina of USP, and a second in Education for Health Professionals at the University of Illinois at Chicago — a combination that placed her at a distinctive intersection between clinical medicine, public health methodology, and health professions education as a scholarly discipline. She completed her doctorate in Paediatrics at FMB, UNESP.
From 2013 to 2015, she served at the federal level within the Secretaria de Gestão e da Educação na Saúde (SGTES) at the Brazilian Ministry of Health — first as Coordenadora Geral de Ações Estratégicas da Educação na Saúde, then as Diretora de Programas — prioritising university-level health education aligned with the development of the SUS and the valorisation of public teaching institutions.
From 2015 to 2023 she served as supervisor of the Centro de Saúde Escola de Botucatu — a teaching health centre of FMB, UNESP integrated into the local SUS — advancing education-through-work methodologies and primary health care within the unified public system. Between 2020 and 2022 she served on the board of ABEM, the Associação Brasileira de Educação Médica.
Academic Formation
- Medical degree (1982) — Faculdade de Medicina de Jundiaí
- Residency in Preventive and Social Medicine — FMB, UNESP, Botucatu
- Master’s in Preventive and Social Medicine — Faculdade de Medicina, USP
- Master’s in Education for Health Professionals — University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
- Doctorate in Paediatrics — FMB, UNESP, Botucatu
Academic Career and Institutional Roles
- Professora Titular, Depto de Saúde Pública, FMB, UNESP (RDIDP regime) — current
- Teaching across medicine, nursing, and nutrition undergraduate programmes; medical and multiprofessional residencies; postgraduate programme in Saúde Coletiva; Professional Master’s in Saúde da Família
- Supervisora, Centro de Saúde Escola de Botucatu, FMB/UNESP — 2015–2023
- Coordenadora Geral de Ações Estratégicas da Educação na Saúde and Diretora de Programas, SGTES, Ministério da Saúde — 2013–2015
- Member of the Board, Associação Brasileira de Educação Médica (ABEM) — 2020–2022
Research, Editorial Work, and Social Engagement
Professor Cyrino’s research centres on health education, medical education, primary health care, and the pedagogical relationships between health systems and communities. She is an Associate Editor of Interface — Comunicação, Saúde e Educação, one of the leading Brazilian journals in health education and collective health.
Beyond institutional academia, she is a member of the Grupo de Mulheres do Jardim Peabirú, a community-rooted collective that articulates health practice with popular education — reflecting a consistent commitment to knowledge produced in and with communities, not merely about them.