The Effects of Health Promotion for Reducing Blood Pressure among Uncontrolled Hypertension Patients in Kongra District, Phatthalung Province

Abstract

Hypertension is a chronic non-communicable disease and remained a public health problem. This quasi-experimental study aimed to determine the effects of health promotion for reducing blood pressure among uncontrolled hypertension patients without comorbidities in Kongra District, Phatthalung Province. Multi-sate sampling was used for recruiting 74 eligible patients who were divided into the control groups (n=37) and experimental groups (n=37) for 8 weeks of intervention. The research activities included providing knowledge about nutrition for controlling and preventing hypertension, especially the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension Diet (DASH); selection of local food patterns according to combination DASH diet and the 2:1:1 food plate model consisting of vegetables ½ of plate, starch ¼ of plate and protein ¼ of plate; group talked and shared the experience of food consumption to combination DASH diet and food plate model 2:1:1; providing knowledge about medication use behaviors; creating a drug calendar, games, messenger for reminding of taking medicine and knowledge and home visits. The data were collected by questionnaire and analyzed by descriptive statistics, Paired t-test, Wilcoxon Sign Rank test, and Mann-Whitney U test. The results showed the differences betweeen experimental group and control group included knowledge scores about hypertension (p<0.001), knowledge scores about the DASH diet (p=0.045), medication use behaviors scores (p=0.004), systolic blood pressure levels (p<0.001), and diastolic blood pressure levels (p=0.014). Therefore, health promotion in patients with uncontrolled hypertension should be continued and the risk of complications could be reduced in the future.