[Resilience: a new perspective in health promotion?].

This descriptive study deals with some concepts of resilience seeking to understand the concept from the viewpoint of health promotion, one of the basic principles of the Brazilian Family Health Program (FHP). Resilience appeared as a new subject in human sciences and in the health area. In human sciences, resilience means the positive capacity of an individual to construct itself coping with adversities, a dimension more attentive to social conditions. Although there is no consensus with regard to this subject, there seem to be some aspects related with Health Promotion. We emphasize the modern understanding of Health Promotion in order to illustrate some aspects associated with resilience such as the greater capacity of Man to decide about the determinants of his health condition. Given that Health Promotion is one of the attributions of the Family Health Program, we contextualized the program emphasizing the action of the health professionals in this area in relation to the subject, seeking to promote health working with resilience. The multi-professional teams of the Family Health Program represent at the same time a network of support and protection for the families, identifying possible risk factors. The emphasis given to the promotion of resilience however should not substitute the public policies for fighting the social inequality and precarious life conditions of part of the population.