Hypertension and Diabetes in Akatsi South District, Ghana: Modeling and Forecasting

The contextual awareness, response and evaluation (CARE) diabetes project: study design for a quantitative survey of diabetes prevalence and non-communicable disease risk in Ga Mashie, Accra, Ghana

Diabetes is estimated to affect between 3.3% and 8.3% of adults in Ghana, and prevalence is expected to rise. The lack of cost-effective diabetes prevention programmes designed specifically for the Ghanaian population warrants urgent attention. The Contextual Awareness, Response and Evaluation (CARE): Diabetes Project in Ghana is a mixed methods study that aims to understand diabetes in the Ga Mashie area of Accra, identify opportunities for community-based intervention and inform future diabetes prevention and control strategies. This paper presents the study design for the quantitative survey within the CARE project. This survey will take place in the densely populated Ga Mashie area of Accra, Ghana. A household survey will be conducted using simple random sampling to select households from 80 enumeration areas identified in the 2021 Ghana Population and Housing Census. Trained enumerators will interview and collect data from permanent residents aged ≥ 25 years. Pregnant women and those who have given birth in the last six months will be excluded. Data analysis will use a combination of descriptive and inferential statistics, and all analyses will account for the cluster sampling design. Analyses will describe the prevalence of diabetes, other morbidities, and associated risk factors and identify the relationship between diabetes and physical, social, and behavioural parameters. This survey will generate evidence on drivers and consequences of diabetes and facilitate efforts to prevent and control diabetes and other NCDs in urban Ghana, with relevance for other low-income communities.

Assessing hypertension and diabetes knowledge, attitudes and practices among residents in Akatsi South District, Ghana using the KAP questionnaire

Objective

Low awareness of hypertension and diabetes is a public health concern in Ghana. Assessing the general population's behaviour via knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) will be invaluable in these diseases, where prevention and control need a lifelong commitment to a healthy lifestyle. Hence, our goal was to assess the behaviour of Akatsi South residents towards the diseases to assist health providers in implementing tailored intervention programs.

Methods

This was a population-based cross-sectional study with 150 adults (18-70 years) from November to December 2021. A semi-structured questionnaire with face-to-face interviews was used to obtain data. All variables in the model had descriptive statistics. The Chi-square (χ²) test was used to examine correlations between variables, and a value of p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. The factors associated with checking blood sugar levels and blood pressure were determined using binary logistic regression.

Results

The respondents' mean age and BMI were 32.40 years (± 12.07) and 24.98 kg/m² (± 2.36), respectively. Only 46.67% of the respondents frequently monitor their blood pressure and 17.33% their blood glucose (at least once a year). Less than half of those surveyed had a good knowledge of hypertension (42.7%) and diabetes (32.0%), whereas nearly 3/4 had poor attitudes regarding both conditions. A binary logistic regression analysis revealed that having a good attitude toward hypertension (exp B = 2.479, p = 0.036) and diabetes (exp B = 4.547, p = 0.009) were the participants' strongest predictor of blood pressure and sugar level checks. However, being overweight (exp B = 0.046, p = 0.002,) or obese (exp B = 0.144, p = 0.034) negatively influenced the frequency with which our respondents checked their blood glucose levels.

Conclusion

In the study, we found that the population generally has poor knowledge, which affects their behaviour (attitudes and practices) towards the diseases. To enable healthcare practitioners to reduce disease-associated mortality and morbidity in the future, frequent public health education and promotion about the conditions is critical to closing the knowledge gap.

Spatiotemporal Analysis and Risk Assessment Model Research of Diabetes among People over 45 Years Old in China

Diabetes, which is a chronic disease with a high prevalence in people over 45 years old in China, is a public health issue of global concern. In order to explore the spatiotemporal patterns of diabetes among people over 45 years old in China, to find out diabetes risk factors, and to assess its risk, we used spatial autocorrelation, spatiotemporal cluster analysis, binary logistic regression, and a random forest model in this study. The results of the spatial autocorrelation analysis and the spatiotemporal clustering analysis showed that diabetes patients are mainly clustered near the Beijing−Tianjin−Hebei region, and that the prevalence of diabetes clusters is waning. Age, hypertension, dyslipidemia, and smoking history were all diabetes risk factors (p < 0.05), but the spatial heterogeneity of these factors was weak. Compared with the binary logistic regression model, the random forest model showed better accuracy in assessing diabetes risk. According to the assessment risk map generated by the random forest model, the northeast region and the Beijing−Tianjin−Hebei region are high-risk areas for diabetes.