The potential of an instrument to identify social vulnerabilities and health needs: collective health knowledge and practices.

Objectives: To analyze an instrument that aims to understand the health-disease process, its potential to identify social vulnerabilities and health needs to enable the most appropriate interventions in a given territory.

Procedures: analysis of the data collection instrument--composed of closed and open questions to identify different profiles of social reproduction (ways of working and living)--used in the Project of Pedagogical Development and activities reported by students at a Collective Health Nursing department.

Conclusions: The instrument enables health care professionals, especially those from Collective Health Nursing, to identify social vulnerabilities and health needs, and guide interventions in different contexts, according to the health promotion perspective. Thus, it reveals potential to transform current health practices, dynamism and constant innovation of these practices in different contexts, according to the 'radicality' that is characteristic of Collective Health.