Hypertension in African Americans: Advances in community outreach and public health approaches

Abstract

While there have been significant advances made towards controlling cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality in recent decades, African- Americans continue to experience a markedly elevated burden of CVD. Multiple factors have contributed to this major public health crisis, including medication adherence, racial inequities in diagnosis and treatment, lack of culturally competent care, and disparities in healthcare access. Historical approaches to reduce this burden are targeted towards community outreach by recruiting community partners and healthcare providers to disseminate health information on CVD awareness and prevention. Current community-based approaches, such as the barbershop and faith-based programs, have built upon previous approaches and incorporated novel ideas to increase community engagement in risk factor and disease reduction. Based on these models, future directions point to an increased usage of community partners, alongside health information technology and healthy behavior patient education, to reduce risk factors and prevalence of CVD in an ethnically vulnerable community.

Keywords: African-Americans; Barbershops; Barriers; Community outreach; Disparities; Hypertension; Information technology; Medication adherence; Physician-pharmacist collaboration; Public health approaches; Social determinants.