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Aim: To estimate the prevalence of non-communicable disease risk factors and investigate the pathways from behavioral risk factors to metabolic risk factors among population aged 30–69 years old. Subject and methods: Data of this study were from the Vietnam STEPS 2015 survey that used the standardized World Health Organization STEPwise approach across all 63 provinces/cities of Vietnam. A total of 2579 participants aged 30–69 years who completed all three rounds of the STEPS survey were analyzed. Structural equation modeling was applied to develop path models from behavioral risk factors to metabolic risk factors. The metabolic risk factors included waist circumference, body mass index, blood pressure, total cholesterol, and blood glucose. Results: The prevalence of participants having two or more behavioral risk factors was 58.6% among males and 8.7% among females, while the figure for metabolic factors was 7.7% and 7.9% respectively. For females, the protective effect of physical activity was demonstrated for waist circumference, body mass index, total cholesterol, and blood glucose, whereas alcohol consumption did not have any impact on metabolic risk factors. In contrast, alcohol consumption showed a dose–response association with systolic blood pressure among males. Smoking status was associated with a smaller waist for both males and females, and lower body mass index for males. Conclusion: The pathways from behavioral risk factors to metabolic risk factors were different between females and males. Findings from this study should be used to develop the policy and prevention strategies appropriately for males and females to improve the helath of the population.

ABSTRACTGiven the rapid spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the huge negative impacts it is causing, researching on COVID-19-related issues is very important for designing proactive and comprehensive public health interventions to fight against the pandemic. We describe the characteristics of COVID-19 patients detected in the two phases of the epidemic in Vietnam. Data used in this paper were mainly obtained from the official database of the Ministry of Health of Vietnam. Descriptive statistics were carried out using Stata 16 software. As of 18 May 2020, the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases detected in Vietnam was 324, 16 cases from 4 cities and provinces in the first phase (during 20 days, 0.8 cases detected per day) and 308 cases from 35 cities, provinces in the second phase (during 76 days, 4.1 cases detected per day). Vietnam has mobilized its entire political system to fight the COVID-19 and achieved some initial successes. We found both similarities and differences between the two phases of the COVID-19 epidemic in Vietnam. We demonstrated that the situation of the COVID-19 epidemic in Vietnam is getting more complicated and unpredictable.