One of the challenges for Latin American countries is to include in their healthcare systems technologies that can be applied to hereditary cancer detection and management. The aim of the study is to create and validate a questionnaire to identify individuals with possible risk for hereditary cancer predisposition syndromes (HCPS), using different strategies in a Cancer Prevention Service in Brazil. The primary screening questionnaire (PSQ) was developed to identify families at‐risk for HCPS. The PSQ was validated using discrimination measures, and the reproducibility was estimated through kappa coefficient. Patients with at least one affirmative answer had the pedigree drawn using three alternative interview approaches: in‐person, by telephone, or letter. Validation of these approaches was done. Kappa and intraclass correlation coefficients were used to analyze data's reproducibility considering the presence of clinical criteria for HCPS. The PSQ was applied to a convenience sample of 20,000 women of which 3121 (15.6%) answered at least one affirmative question and 1938 had their pedigrees drawn. The PSQ showed sensitivity and specificity scores of 94.4% and 75%, respectively, and a kappa of 0.64. The strategies for pedigree drawing had reproducibility coefficients of 0.976 and 0.850 for the telephone and letter approaches, respectively. Pedigree analysis allowed us to identify 465 individuals (24.0%) fulfilling at least one clinical criterion for HCPS. The PSQ fulfills its function, allowing the identification of HCPS at‐risk families. The use of alternative screening methods may reduce the number of excluded at‐risk individuals/families who live in locations where oncogenetic services are not established.

Usually, the mass media do not address hereditary cancer and their risk factors, nor are these topics discussed at the community level. We used an informative guide on cancer and hereditary cancer, followed by a questionnaire on these topics to investigate the relevant knowledge among women at high risk for hereditary breast and/or colorectal cancer from a population-based cohort. The cohort was composed of 81 Brazilian women with positive family histories of breast and/or colorectal cancer. Strauss and Corbin's Grounded Theory was used for qualitative analysis. The average age of the cohort was 49.9 years old. Three participants (3.9%) were illiterate, 45 (59.2%) had attended elementary school, 14 (18.4%) had secondary school, and 14 (18.4%) held higher education degrees. A total of 47 (54.3%) volunteers were unable to fully understand the information provided in the guide because they did not know the meaning of words such as metastasis, malignant, hereditary, sporadic, or oncogenetics. Notwithstanding, the acceptance of the educational tool utilized was satisfactory, and it enhanced the volunteers' interest in a better understanding of cancer and heredity. Thereby, we concluded that the low knowledge of this important subject and the unawareness about fundamental terms required for the comprehension of this specific type of neoplasm made us believe that the use of the informative guide can provide a great value when used previously to the genetic counseling consultations. Besides, educational tools of easy understanding should be part of everyday clinical practice, from primary to specialized patient care.