Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System

The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is a survey conducted annually in the United States by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in cooperation with state health departments. The BRFSS, whose primary focus is behavioral risks to health, began collecting data in 1984 with 15 states participating; since 1994, all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands have been included in the BRFSS.

The BRFSS was the first ongoing national survey to collect data about health and health risk behaviors, and it was designed from the start to provide estimates of these behaviors at both the state and the national levels. Creation of the BRFSS was in large part due to the ...