The application of the concept of "risk" to maternal and child health was studied, the starting point being the World Health Organization's proposal for a "risk approach" in health services. The study was concerned with the development of a scoring system for the identification of groups at high risk of death during the first year of life, whether in the neonatal or the post-neonatal periods, and was based on a case-control study. The case group consistes of children under one year of life, whose deaths had been registered during the years 1984 and 1985 and whose parents lived in Cotia and Vargem Grande Paulista (149 cases). The control group was a probabilistic sample of 216 children born in 1984, which survived the first year of life and whose parents lived in the same area. All the mothers were interviewed by means of a questionnaire for the identification of independent variables associated with infant death. The statistically associated variables were grouped in four scales: to be used, respectively, in the antenatal period, prior to delivery and in the neonatal and post-neonatal periods. The variables were weighted in the scales according to the values of the odds ratio, and they have different cut points, each one having its own sensibility, specificity and predictive value.
Infant mortality; Risk factors; Risk groups; Predictive value of tests