Lifestyle, Perception of Health and Blood Pressure among Accra’s Urban Poor

ABSTRACT

Lifestyle behaviors are the major determinants of risk factors such as high blood pressure and also a risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. These lifestyles include tobacco use, poor diet, physical inactivity and excessive alcohol consumption. Perception of health is an important and valid measure of people’s general wellbeing. Perceived health status does not replace or substitute actual health outcomes but rather complements it. Now more than ever, hypertension is the single number one cause of heart and renal failure in Ghana with the Greater Accra Region recording hypertension as the second leading cause of outpatient morbidity in 2007. Studies have shown that Accra provides concrete evidence for the challenges in lifestyle pattern. Therefore, understanding how individuals who engage in unhealthy lifestyle perceive health and how it translates into their actual health status (measured by blood pressure) is central to developing and making practical policy on preventive lifestyle interventions.

The study relies on data from the 2011 Edulink urban health and poverty project round II survey. Simple percentages, bivariate and multivariate analyses are employed to identify the association between perception of health, lifestyle behaviours and blood pressure. Ninety percent of the respondents perceive their health to be either good or excellent and 16 percent of the sample is hypertensive. However, more than 50 percent of the sample population who perceived their health to be good or excellent is either pre-hypertensive or hypertensive. In respect of the lifestyle behaviour, 70 percent of the respondents have poor dietary intake. Only 75 individuals currently smoke. The alcohol consumption rate is 45 percent while 90 percent are physically active.

However, after controlling for confounding variables, the multinomial logistic regression model indicates that age, sex, religion and dietary intake are the most important predictors of hypertension. The findings further indicate that females are 0.7 times less likely to be pre hypertensive and 0.6 times less likely to be hypertensive than males. Individuals with poor dietary intake are 1.6 more likely to be pre-hypertensive and individuals aged 15-19 years are 0.8 times less likely to be pre-hypertensive compared to individuals aged 50 years and above. Among the religious groups, Other Religion, Christians and Moslems are 9.7, 10.7 and 12.9 times more likely respectively to be pre-hypertensive compared to Traditional Religion.

The study found disparity between individual’s perceived health and blood pressure status. Therefore, there should be campaigns on the massive awareness and education about hypertension and more importantly this education should be targeted at promoting appropriate views of health and the need for improved health.