(P30-038-24) Development of a General Health Tracking Instrument for the Brazilian Population

Objectives: To propose a general health assessing tool (with online use suitability), aimed at providing a means for individuals to assess the quality of their health, the adequacy of lifestyle choices, entirely based on scientifically validated questionnaires, and directed towards the Brazilian population.

Methods: The strategy aimed to address 5 different clusters (general health, nutrition adequacy, emotional balance, physical activity and sleep quality), which together are informative of relevant aspects of general health and lifestyle choices. The questions (maximum of 5 per cluster) have been obtained from validated, published studies retrieved from indexed publications. As the instrument dedicated to the Brazilian population, with its particularities (mixed ethnicity, etc) the chosen tools were those with previous endorsement of Brazilian culture and language. The scoring will obey that described in each of the already validated and published instruments,
and will provide information to the user about which clusters deserve more attention in the road for improved health and wellbeing. Non-individualized, pooled data will be retrieved, as to afford information about the specific health needs
of the Brazilian population. This will, nevertheless, solely happen after validation of the tool, to be carried out in another step, after all the ethical requirements are met.

Results: By adopting pre-validated questionnaires (in Portuguese), published in indexed journals and aimed at each different domains of health and wellbeing, we developed a prompt-use, easy to score tool, with scientific basis and immediate applicability in eHealth.The tool, with easy self-reporting and scoring also entertains the possibility of reassessment, as to verify whether the adopted strategies resulted in benefits.

Conclusions: Given the widespread use of eHealth tools devoid of validation and scientific value/background, we herein propose an instrument with immediate applicability in virtual health and lifestyle choices self-assessment. By employing questionnaires already validated for the Brazilian population, with well described scoring systems, the designed instrument will potentially contribute to diminish the risk imposed by the widespread use of inaccurate and dubious tools.

Funding Sources: This research was supported by Vitat.