The study, conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Shaw University in Raleigh, showed that continuity of care was associated with patients' increased awareness of their hypertension and receiving medications for it, as well as a lower incidence of undetected high blood pressure. Racial conformity between patients and caregivers was not a significant factor.
"We believe these findings are important because, despite progress in hypertension management, African-Americans still are less likely than whites to know that they have the illness, be treated for it and have their blood pressure controlled," said Dr. Thomas R. Konrad of UNC. "Regular access to a usual care source and sustained affiliation with a physician can improve hypertension management in both older African-American and white patients."
A report on the findings appears in the December issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Besides Konrad, authors are Dr. Timothy S. Carey of UNC's Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research, Dr. Daniel L. Howard, professor of health policy at Shaw, and Drs. Lloyd J. Edwards and Anastasia Ivanova at the UNC School of Public Health.
Carey, professor of medicine at the UNC School of Medicine, directs the Sheps center, and Konrad is co-director of its program on health professions and primary care. Respectively, Edwards and Ivanova are associate professor and assistant professor, both of biostatistics. At Shaw, Howard directs the Institute for Health, Social and Community Research.
Investigators conducted the study to learn how important continuity of care and doctors being of the same race as their patients were in diagnosing high blood pressu
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Contact: David Williamson
rdtokids@email.unc.edu
919-962-8596
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
22-Nov-2005