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African American Hypertension

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African American has been plague with hypertension, otherwise known as high blood pressure or the “silent killer” for decades. It is estimated that approximately 72 million Americans - almost 1 in 3 adults – are affected by this disease (National Heart Lung Blood Institute (NHLBI)). However, hypertension is more common in African Americans than Whites and other ethnic groups for the different classifications of blood pressure levels. According to Rosamond et al., 2007” African Americans have the highest prevalence rate of hypertension in the world. For example, a national survey in the US, found that the age-adjusted prevalence of hypertension was 78.7% for non-Hispanic blacks, 46.7% for non-Hispanic whites, and 41.8% for Mexican-Americans …show more content…

Some African American, especially those in low resource communities, do not know how routine visit to the doctor and taking their medication on a regular basis can be beneficial to their health. Missing appointment are often time associated with increased risk of hospitalization. By missing appointment, doctor are not able to provide the proper care to their patient, which is often time result in poor control of chronic illness, hospitalization and sometime death if proper medical care is not given in time. Often time African American in low resource community have a hard achieving normal blood pressure as appose to other ethnic group. Even though several intervention programs are set in place to improve appointment adherence, many individual still missed schedule appointment, which remain a problem because proper healthcare and treatment is not given. Many individual does not know about the importance of appointment adherence, but despite its importance, not much information or data exist about the risk factors associated with non-adherence among hypertensive African American. “Therefore, to fill this gap, this study examined factors associated with patient-reported appointment adherence among African-Americans with severe, poorly controlled hypertension, using data from the Inner City Hypertension and Body Organ Damage (ICHABOD) - a cross-sectional survey of urban African-Americans hospitalized with severe, poorly controlled

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