Social representation of Hansen's disease thirty years after the term "leprosy" was replaced in Brazil.

Based on the theories of social representation (SC) and Central Core (CC), a structural study was undertaken regarding the neologism hanseniase (Hansen's disease), the term adopted by Brazil's Ministry of Health in the 1970s. Carried out during 2001, this study interviewed eight hundred housewives residing in the Rio de Janeiro and Duque de Caxias municipalities. It found that Hansen's disease is part of a process of modernization of common thinking, anchored in the additional representation of leprosy.