World Alliance for Risk Factor Surveillance White Paper on Surveillance and Health Promotion

This is not a research paper on risk factor surveillance. It is an effort by a key group of researchers and practitioners of risk factor surveillance to define the current state of the art and to identify the key issues involved in the current practice of behavioral risk factor surveillance. Those of us who are the principal authors have worked and carried out research in this area for some three decades. As a result of a series of global meetings beginning in 1999 and continuing every two years since then, a collective working group of the International Union of Health Promotion and Education (IUHPE) was formed under the name World Alliance of Risk Factor Surveillance (WARFS). Under this banner the organization sought to write a comprehensive statement on the importance of surveillance to health promotion and public health. This paper, which has been revised and reviewed by established peers in the field, is the result. It provides the reader with a clear summary of the major issues that need to be considered by any and all seeking to carry out behavioral risk factor surveillance.