Previously submitted to: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance (no longer under consideration since Jul 26, 2019)
Date Submitted: Jul 18, 2019
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Exploratory study of hypertension among Ghanaian adolescent/youth: Phase A; Real world experience
ABSTRACT
Background:
Hypertension (HTN) remains a global risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, with an estimated 442 million to 874 million SBP of ≥ 140 mmHg from 1990 to 2015 correspondingly. HTN prevalence ranges from 25% to 48% in Ghana. There is limited studies on HTN and youth in Ghana, particularly, none has been conducted on the adolescents/youth at the Senior High School level, and therefore this paper seeks to provide literature to fill this vacuum.
Objective:
To assess the current prevalence of HTN and pre HTN of the youth of Ghana, estimate the future prevalence and propose possible interventions
Methods:
A three-phase community based cross-sectional study was conducted. Participants were selected using a multi staged random method. Questionnaires were distributed to participants to collect data on socio-demographics, while a face to face blood pressure screening was also performed on them.
Results:
A total participant of 372 finished the screening and formed the final analysis Majority of the participants were aged between 15- 17 and above 18 years (176/47.3% with CI: 95: 42.2-52.3 and 178/47.8% with CI: 95: 43.4-53.0 respectively), at the SHS level of education and youthful. The study found low level of knowledge within its participants. A little more than thirty percent (30.1%) were pre-hypertensive, 5.1% with stage one HTN and .6% with stage two HTN. There were positive associations between Weight, Hip circumference for male, metabolic syndrome and type of foods regularly eaten by the participants with hypertension
Conclusions:
The future workforces of Ghana who are at the Senior High School (SHS) level are at a probable risk to early HTN. Increasing education at this stage within the curricular of the education system in Ghana may be a step forward
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