Vigilância de Fatores de Risco para Doenças Crônicas por Inquérito Telefônico nas capitais dos 26 estados brasileiros e no

Abstract Objectives: Objectives: To describe methods and ini-tial findings of the Surveillance System ofRisk and Protective Factors for ChronicNon-Communicable Diseases throughTelephone Interviews – VIGITEL imple-mented in Brazil in 2006. Methods:VIGITEL studied random samples of indi-viduals with 18 years of age or more livingin households with telephones in eachcapital of the 26 Brazilian states and theFederal District (54,369 total individuals,and at least 2,000 per city). Sampling wasbased on complete electronic telephonedirectories in each city and included ran-dom selection of phone lines (households)and random selection of the householdmember to be interviewed. The question-naire investigated demographic and socio-economic characteristics, diet patterns,physical activity, smoking, consumption ofalcoholic beverages, recalled weight andheight, and other topics. Prevalence esti-mates of selected protective and risk fac-tors, stratified by gender with correspon-ding 95% Confidence Intervals, were cal-culated for the adult population of each cityusing sample weighing factors designed toequalize the sample socio-demographicdistribution in each city to the distributionobserved in the same city in the Demo-graphic Census of 2000. Estimates werealso calculated for all cities together usingadditional sample weighing that took intoaccount the adult population size of eachcity. Findings:Findings: The five sel ected risk fac-tors (smoking, excessive consumption ofalcoholic beverages, overweight, habit ofeating fatty meats, and physical inactivity)were more frequent among men thanwomen. Among protective factors, theregular consumption of fruits and vege-tables was more common among womenthan men and the opposite was seen forleisure-time physical activity. Strong diffe-rences among the cities were found for allprotective and risk factors, with distinctpatterns of regional distribution seen fordifferent factors. Discussion:Discussion: The perfor-mance of the system, evaluated based onthe quality of telephone directories andresponse and refusal rates, was appropria-te and in general higher than the perfor-mance seen in similar systems of deve-loped countries. The cost of R$ 31.15 percomplete interview was half the cost of theBehavioral Risk-Factor Surveillance Sys-tem and one fifth of the cost estimated fora household survey on risk factors forchronic diseases recently conducted inBrazil.Keywords:Keywords: Non-communicable diseases.Adults. Telephone interviews. Food con-sumption. Physical activity. Smoking. Obe-sity. Socioeconomic status. Urban popu-lation. Brazil.