Surveys are an important strategy for the monitoring of adolescent health, especially if conducted in schools, considering that in Brazil, according to the National Household Sample Survey (Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios - PNAD), the enrollment rate in this age group is over 90%, regardless of the socioeconomic status of the families¹1. Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios - Síntese de Indicadores. 2ª ed. IBGE: Rio de Janeiro; 2013 [acessado e 31 ago. 2018]. Disponível em: Disponível em: https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualizacao/livros/liv94414.pdf
https://biblioteca.ibge.gov.br/visualiza... .

The National School Health Survey (Pesquisa Nacional de Saúde do Escolar - PeNSE) is a survey that was first conducted in 2009 with teenage schoolchildren. Since then, there have been two other editions (2012 and 2015). The PeNSE is the result of the partnership between the Ministry of Health (MoH) and the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística - IBGE), with the support of the Ministry of Education (MEC). The target population are students in the 9th year of elementary education, and, in 2015, students from the 6th grade of elementary school to the 3rd year of secondary education were included, with the aim of making the research representative of students aged 13 to 17 years. The results of the last issue of PeNSE are the focus of this thematic issue, which also includes analyses of two other national surveys: the Surveillance System for Risk Factors and Protection for Chronic Diseases by Telephone Inquiry, the Vigitel, which was the source of data used in an article on the possession of health insurance plans; and the National Health Survey (Pesquisa Nacional de Saúde - PNS), which provided data for the study on hypertension.

The analyses of PeNSE data allow the knowledge of how adolescents live and behave, which is of great importance for the formulation of public policies and for the planning of actions in public health. Adolescents undergo relevant biological, cognitive, emotional and social changes. At this stage of life, the theme of this issue is presented in the works that comprise this thematic issue, experimentation of new behaviors and experiences, and some of these experiences are risk factors for health, such as the use of industrialized tobacco and other forms of presentation that have been becoming common, such as narghile, as well as alcohol consumption, drug use, inadequate food, and sedentary lifestyle, among others. These risk factors are associated with the development of most chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), asthma, violence, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), explored in this volume, as well as disorders. Otherwise, the implementation of PeNSE in 2015 allowed us to analyze the change in indicators over time, such as the use of condoms, which fell in the period from 2009 to 2015 among adolescents.

The articles presented here represent the range of possibilities for analysis and production of knowledge about adolescent health that PeNSE offers. We hope that this collection of articles can help readers and managers in the knowledge of the health situation of adolescents, filling gaps that were missing and in the conduct of their responsibilities, in order to reduce the health inequities present in the Brazilian society.

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