Hypertension awareness, beliefs, and preventive health behaviours: a canada-wide survey of four ethnic communities
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Canadian population-level research indicates that ethnic minority groups experience the highest rates and poorest control of hypertension. It is unclear how individuals’ attitudes and beliefs about hypertension, which are linked to hypertension prevention and management, may differ across ethnic communities. Understanding potential differences in perceptions of hypertension among ethnic communities is needed to contextualize current population-level research and to challenge policy or drive practice change that address the burden of hypertension among minority populations. Method The purpose of this research was to describe perceptions of hypertension across four ethnic communities in Canada (White, Black, East/Southeast Asian, and South Asian). A survey ascertaining individuals’ awareness, beliefs, and preventive health behaviours with respect to hypertension risk and control was distributed across Canada. A purposive sampling strategy was used to promote a balanced representation across the four ethnic groups. Descriptive statistics and chi squared analyses were applied to characterize the participant sample and to determine the effects of ethnic grouping on perceptions of hypertension. Results Participants (N = 1003) identified as East/Southeast Asian (26.52%), South Asian (26.62%), Black (26.62%) or White (19.94%), and the number of participants <40 years was nearly equivalent to participants aged 41-80 (49.5%; 50.5%). Across groups, participants were predominantly English-speaking (45.06%), women (58.92%), with Canadian citizenship (69.59%) but many were born outside of Canada (59.32%). A small portion of participants (15.8%) reported having high blood pressure. There were no significant differences across ethnic groups in knowledge of hypertension (p=.057), but groups differed in perceptions of hypertension risk factors (p=.001), reported challenges managing hypertension risk (p=.034) and preventive health behaviours (p=0.0001). Specifically, chi-square tests of independence demonstrated that the choice to limit the intake of trans/saturated fats (X2(3)= 25.74, p<.0001, j = 0.16), alcohol (X2(3)= 41.63, p<.0001, j = 0.20), tobacco (X2(3)=36.84, p<.0001, j =0.19), and to exercise on a regular basis (X2(3)= 50.37, p<.0001, j = 0.22) differed significantly by ethnicity. There were significant differences by ethnicity in speaking to a religious/spiritual leader (X2(3)=69.40, p<.0001, j =0.263) and engaging on social media to understand hypertension risk and management (X2(3)=26.46, p<.0001, j =0.16). Conclusion This study provides preliminary evidence that perceptions of hypertension risk and prevention differ across ethnic groups. Larger, comparative studies that examine the potency of ethnicity on hypertension awareness, beliefs, and preventive behaviours are needed to provide the foundation for the development of culturally sensitive hypertension care practices and educational opportunities for specific ethnic groups.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".