dc.description.abstract | Over the last century, several countries in the world have experienced social, political, economic, and environmental transformations. These changes result in major cultural, behavioral and lifestyle changes in populations. Individuals are led to an environment in which physical work is increasingly extinct, thus resulting in the predominance of sedentary lifestyles as a social characteristic. The convenience of passive transport, spectator-based entertainment, reduced energy expenditure through activities of daily living are aspects that have been generating an increase in risk factors and rates of non-communicable chronic diseases, characterizing the well-known epidemiological transition (YUSUF et al., 2001; BRAMBLE; LIEBERMAN, 2004; ARCHER; BLAIR, 2011). At the beginning of this century, Brazil is experiencing a health situation that combines an accelerated demographic transition and a unique epidemiological transition expressed in the triple burden of diseases: an unsurpassed agenda of infectious and deficient diseases, an important burden of external causes and a presence strongly hegemonic of chronic conditions (MENDES, 2012). | en |