Impairments, health conditions and health risk behaviors: occurrence and associations, in the National Health Survey, Brazil, 2019.

Objective: To analyze association of visual, hearing, mental/intellectual, physical and multiple impairments with health conditions and health risk behaviors in Brazil.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional study, using data from the 2019 National Health Survey; associations between impairments and presence of cardiovascular disease (CVD), hypertension, diabetes mellitus (DM), high cholesterol, alcohol abuse and smoking were estimated using logistic regression, thus obtaining the odds ratios (OR).

Results: Impairment was reported by 7.6% of the 90,846 participants. Having a impairment was associated with greater odds of reporting chronic conditions, especially CVD (OR = 2.11; 95%CI 1.76;2.54) and DM (OR = 1.78; 95%CI 1.56;2.02 ); visual impairment was associated with greater odds of smoking (OR = 1.52; 95%CI 1.28;1.81); mental/intellectual impairment was inversely related to smoking (OR = 0.45; 95%CI 0.30;0.67) and alcohol abuse (OR = 0.13; 95%CI 0.06;0.26).

Conclusion: Having any of the impairments studied may be associated with greater odds of having chronic health conditions.

Main results: Positive association was identified between having one or more impairments, and health conditions and health risk behaviors. The higher the prevalence of mental/intellectual, physical and multiple impairments, the lower alcohol abuse and smoking.

Implications for services: As this population is vulnerable to chronic health conditions, health services need strategies to reduce barriers to access, as well as health promotion actions, such as health education, adapted for people with impairments.

Perspectives: Topics for future studies, examining the inverse relationship between impairments and alcohol abuse and smoking, in addition to acting on the causal chain, so as to prevent health conditions and health risk behaviors.