Starting on Monday, August 26, nearly 1,500 IBGE´s survey agents will visit 108 thousand households in more than three thousand municipalities in the entire country. The data of the National Survey of Health - PNS will be collected up to February 2020 and the first results are scheduled to be released in 2021.

The IBGE starts today the household visits of the National Survey of Health - PNS 2019. Carried out in a covenant with the Ministry of Health and in partnership with the International Labor Organization - ILO, the PNS investigates the prevalence of non-communicable chronic diseases and quantifies the population with physical disabilities. Other important indicators are related with lifestyle (sedentarism, smoking, diet, alcohol consumption) and oral health. The PNS also investigates whether the residents suffered some type of violence and monitors the accomplishment of preventive exams, as well as assesses the perception of the population on the Unified Health System - SUS.

The PNS also collects the anthropometric data – weight and height – of one of the residents of the households visited, in order to detect the incidence of obesity and establish the medians of weight and height of the population.

The PNS was carried out for the first time in 2013, though it continues an investigation cycle carried out by the IBGE every five years since 1998, with the health supplements of the former National Household Sample Survey - PNAD.

The IBGE published four releases of the data of the National Survey of Health 2013 between December 2014 and June 2016. The PNS 2013 unveiled, for instance, that 14.5% of the population aged 18 years and over smoked and 24.0% drank alcoholic beverages at least once per week. Among the women who had a baby in the reference period of the survey, 54.7% had a cesarean section.

Obesity affected one out of five adults and this percentage was higher among women (24.4%) than among men (16.8%). The survey also unveiled that 11.2 million persons (or 7.6% of the population aged 18 years and over) were diagnosed with depression by a mental health professional. Also among the adults in Brazil, 21.4% were hypertensive, 6.2% were diabetic and 12.5% showed high cholesterol, according to the PNS 2013.

These and other themes investigated in 2013 remain in the PNS 2019, allowing an assessment of their evolution over the last years.

The PNS 2019 includes new themes, like paternity, male participation in prenatal, sexual activity and work conditions

The National Survey of Health 2019 included new themes beyond those investigated in the 2013 edition. One of these innovations is the module of questions on paternity and prenatal exams, directed to men.

The PNS 2019 will bring a module on sexual activity, which will be applied to the residents over 18 years of age. There is also questions on the use of condoms and age in which the persons had their first intercourse.

Another new module will be that of Work Relations and Conditions, which follows the recommendations from the ILO, with questions to detect hazardous conditions in the work environment, as well as related health problems.

The PNS remains investigating whether the residents suffered some type of violence, where and who was the perpetrator, though the 2019 edition will include new questions to detail the nature of such violence (physical, sexual or psychological).

The module of basic attention to health was extended and will bring a series of questions on the use of the Unified Health System - SUS. The answers will comprise an indicator that will allow a more detailed assessment of the service received by the interviewees.

The first part of the questionnaire of the PNS 2019 will capture information from all the residents.  In the second part, a resident aged 15 years and over will be selected to answer a specific set of questions and have their anthropometric data collected.

The expectation is that the survey will be conducted every five years, with details in the levels: Brazil, Major Regions, Federation Units, metropolitan areas which contain the municipalities of capitals and municipalities of capitals.

Confidentiality of the information collected by PNS is guaranteed by law

It is important to highlight that all the information collected by the PNS is protected by the confidentiality law of statistical information (Law no. 5,534) and can only be use for statistical purposes.

The IBGE´s survey agents will use a badge and an electronic equipment to collect the data (handheld computer). Residents can confirm the identity of the interviewer through a free telephone call to 0800 721 8181.