This material aims to rescue the history of public health in Brazil. It was initially built as a support material for the presentation of a seminar in the Social Policy discipline of a Social Work course at a Brazilian public university. The construction context of this material was considerably different from the situation in which we live today in a pandemic context, however, no changes were made to the material. The objective of making this construction public is related to the possibility of contributing to the studies of students from different courses regarding health policy in the country, since here, a compilation of its history from the 16th century to the present is presented with the creation of the Unified Health System (SUS). We hope that this material can support the learning and knowledge of all those interested in the topic.