Descriptors for the elaboration of search strategies were selected in MeSH and DeCS, the controlled vocabularies from MEDLINE and LILACS, respectively. Embase's plan was designed with Emtree descriptors associated with MeSH. Free terms were also used, that is, significant keywords and their synonyms, spelling variations, and acronyms that are essential for searching in the searched domain, but which are not controlled descriptors (or are not in the synonym list of these descriptors). Importantly, to maintain search uniformity, the same descriptors were used in all search strategies. However, search strategies were customized according to the specifics of each database. In addition, it is worth noting that the terms related to "Brazil" were generally searched in all fields of research (subject, author, title, institutional affiliation, journal name, etc.).

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The selected bases for research were MEDLINE/PubMed, Embase, LILACS, CINAHL, Cochrane Library Scopus, and Web of Science. The following bibliographic research filters and limits were used: period of publication (2004-2020); languages (Portuguese, English and Spanish); type of study/publication (Review, Meta-Analysis, Clinical Trial, Randomized Controlled Trial, Comparative Study, Practice Guideline, Guideline, Systematic Review, Evaluation Studies, Government Publications, and Multicenter Study). All references were managed using EndNote Web. From the search, articles were included if the study were population- or community-based; nation- or state-wide studies were preferred. Moreover, articles set at health services or hospitals were included if the study was multicenter and had an adequate sample size (>200 participants was the suggested cut-off), preferably. In addition to the articles identified by the systematic search, the authors could include other studies found in the references of the searched articles or other articles they were aware of in their area of expertise, if the studies fulfilled the criteria above mentioned. Finally, which studies should be described in each chapter was mostly a decision of the experts commissioned to the specific theme.