A Attitudes Regarding Hypertension Among Older African-American Adults

Before hypertension can be effectively treated in older African-American patients, the clinician must become familiar with the attitudes of this population regarding this disease. One of the major barriers to effective antihypertensive therapy is having a clinician who is not aware of potential impact that patient attitudes have on compliance with office visits and pharmacological therapy. One group of investigators did a survey of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and non-Hispanic white adults over the age of 75 years that assessed ethnic differences in perceptions regarding the cause, prevention, and treatment of hypertension as well as associations between perceptions and the use of preventive health services (1). The survey found that African Americans felt that hypertension resulted from poor health behaviors and stress, but that it was both preventable and treatable. In contrast, non-Hispanic whites felt that hypertension is a result of various mechanistic causes and heredity; also, they felt hypertension was treatable but not preventable. Finally, Hispanic Americans were more likely to state that hypertension was the result of aging and poor health behaviors and was not susceptible to treatment.