Research article review Hypertension article. Research Paper

Community Health Workers
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Research Article Review Fact Sheet
Community Health Workers as Allies in Hypertension Self-Management and Medication Adherence in the United States, 2014
Key facts
* An estimated 30% of the adults in the United States suffer from hypertension, which places them at a very high risk of developing heart diseases and stroke (Allen, Brownstein, Satsangi & Escoffery, 2016).
* Statistics indicate that the heart diseases are the first cause death in the United States while stroke comes in at number five cause of death. Ironically, control remains very low among the underserved populations (Austin-Evelyn et al., 2017).
* The limits to quality health for the underserved populations are related to a number of elements among them, diverse values, uninformed health beliefs poor access culturally sensitive care, lack of disease self-management skills as well as limited access resources (Allen, Brownstein, Satsangi & Escoffery, 2016).
* Medication adherence has been determined to be quite low among the low income adults especially where they have multiple chronic diseases or they lack prescription drug coverage (Kane et al., 2016).
* Health care providers are faced with the changes of disseminating the right information to their patients’ relative to the fact that, the patients in question tend to make infrequent visits that would assist in persistent hypertension self-management, long-term lifestyle changes are crucial along with support (O'Brien, Squires, Bixby & Larson, 2009).
Community health workers
* The CHWs are the front firing line of the nonclinical staff assisting the in public health (Rachlis et al., 2016).
* They are trusted by the communities where they work as such provide a bridge between the health workers and the community members, facilitating access to services (Rosenthal et al., 2010).
* CHWs have been established to be some of the most effective interventionists when it comes to the blood pressure control and management (Singh & Chokshi, 2013).
* The CHWs role in health care is crucial as they assist reinforcing the doctor’s instructions and helping them make healthy lifestyle changes (Allen, Brownstein, Satsangi & Escoffery, 2016).
* CHWs also act as patients advocates helping them receive the care that they need, as they are able to connect with the patients and the health care providers (Hohl et al., 2016).
Medication Adherence
* The CHWs play a crucial role when it comes to the medication adherence among the patients especially given that most of the patients tend to forget about their medication (Schneider & Maleka, 2018).
* Relative to condition related factors, most of the patients that had more than one chronic condition are confused about how to go about taking the medication for the different conditions (Seutloali, Napoles & Bam, 2018).
* Complex related barriers are common elements that affect the adherence of the patients to their medication (Allen, Brownstein, Satsangi & Escoffery, 2016).
* Lack of knowledge about the medication tends to increase the level of poor adherence one the same (Nzioki, Onyango & Ombaka, 2015).
* The c...