The differences between the social determination of health approach adopted by the Latin-American Social Medicine and Collective Health movement and the WHO's social determinants of health approach are not merely conceptual but involve ethical and political considerations. Different notions of causality and risk are implied in the aforementioned approaches and shape how concepts regarding health-illness and health inequity are understood and how they may be confronted. This article attempts to clarify the praxiological implications of such approaches and contextualise the approaches' socio-historical construction, address epistemological, methodological and ontological differences and propose some considerations regarding the praxiological implications.