The State and The Progress Towards Mitigating Risks of Hypertension in the U.S.

Critical Appraisal
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The Healthy 2020 concept that most people hear today is an agenda proposed upon by the federal government in order to achieve the dream of having a healthier nation. More specifically, the aim of this program is to be able to identify and carefully analyzed the most significant preventable diseases that inflict the citizens and develop a strategy to be able to mitigate this. In line with this concept, the author of this article would discuss the study done by Egan, Hutchison, and Ferdinand (2014), with regards to the state and the progress towards mitigating risks of hypertension in the U.S., in relation to the goal that was set to be achieved by the year 2020. More specifically, this study tried to analyze whether the current strategies and its implementation are in line with the goals of the Healthy 2020 agenda. What makes this study significant is that amongst all of the preventable diseases, hypertension presents one of the biggest risks, especially due to what professionals would call as a “residual lifetime risks” (Vasan, et al., 2002). This residual risk increases the chances of heart attacks as well as other complications that could be fatal for an individual, and thus being able to follow the milestones set by the Healthy 2020 agenda, would mean that the risks of the disease are indeed being lowered. With regards to its contribution to the pool of knowledge, the author of this article believes that this study (although it only utilized previous data), has provided an insight with regards to the trend of improvement regarding the aim of risk mitigation.
In order to analyze the trend of improvement (or decline) of the effectivity of hypertension management programs, the authors have utilized the use of quantitative data and analyzed it through a time-series analysis, starting from the year of 1999 up to 2012. More particularly, the authors have analyzed the trend based on the data provided by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys, which is being conducted every two years. As for the author of this article, he believes that utilizing a “time-series” analysis in measuring improvement of service and the level of goal-attainment, is a cost-effective and accurate way of measure. This is because improvement could not be measured easily in small periods of time (cross-sectional) because of the effects of external factors (Granger & Joyeux, 1980). Aside from this, the author of this article believes that the use of the time-series in unison with the variables (degree of hypertension control and a number of treatments) that the study has utili...