About Tennessee Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (TN BRFSS)

The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is a telephone interviewing project conducted in cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Participating states develop annual surveys to collect data regarding health experiences, health behaviors and risk factors, chronic disease, and access to health care. Surveys are asked of adult (18+) state residents from randomly selected households.

The data collected by the BRFSS helps monitor state-level prevalence of the major behavioral risks associated with premature sickness and death among adults. It can also be used to identify high risk populations that can be targeted for intervention programs, and in turn assess the impact of any policy or health promotion and prevention intervention programs.

Many of the behavioral risk factors surveyed in this system cannot be obtained from any other health statistics sources; the BRFSS serves as an important, timely, accurate, and often sole resource in measuring and monitoring the personal health behaviors and lifestyle conditions that are related to good or poor health outcomes or situations.

Currently, every state in the country, the District of Columbia, and three U.S. territories participate in the BRFSS. The Tennessee Department of Health has been participating in this system on a continuing basis since 1984.

To find out which questions were asked for a given year, please refer to the BRFSS Matrix .