The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) Division of Population Health released the 2017 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) data and prevalence tables.

The BRFSS continues to be the largest ongoing telephone-based surveillance system in the world, with more than 450,000 interviews conducted in 2017 across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Guam. The 2017 data on health risk behaviors, clinical preventive health practices, and healthcare access (primarily related to chronic disease and injury) come from a representative sample of non-institutionalized adults aged 18 years and older in each state or territory.

The state-specific data from the BRFSS provides a sound basis for developing and evaluating public health programs and policies, including interventions targeted to reduce health disparities. The 2017 BRFSS dataset includes 56% of interviews completed by cell phone respondents. Continued efforts to reach cellphone respondents have improved the validity, data quality, and representativeness of BRFSS data.

The prevalence tables, which include state BRFSS and SMART BRFSS (metropolitan/micropolitan statistical area) data, are available at http://www.cdc.gov/brfss/brfssprevalence/index.html. BRFSS 2017 data files are available at https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_2017.html.

CDC encourages partners from public health agencies, non-profit organizations, academia, and governmental posts at the national, state, and local levels to use the BRFSS data to inform public health activities. The release of the 2017 BRFSS data will help strengthen the capacity of all public health partners and stakeholders to identify and address health risk behaviors, monitor changes in practices and diseases, assess public health programs, and design and target implementation of prevention strategies at the local and state level.