ORIGINAL: The Perspectives of Lagos Healthcare Leaders on Faith-Institution Involvement in Hypertension Health

West Afr J Med April 2024; 41(4): 452-468 PMID: 39003766

Abstract

Background: Hypertension is an important challenge for the Nigerian healthcare system and multiple stakeholder mitigation is imperative. Faith institution mitigation is evolving but the opinion of healthcare leaders on their involvement in hypertension remains an important gap.

Objective: To explore the perspectives of a cross-section of leaders of healthcare institutions in Lagos (Nigeria) on faith institution-facilitated hyper tension inter vention against the background of current practice.

Methods: Attempts were made to recruit 152 healthcare institution leaders who were contacted using electronic mails, telephone conversations, institutional social media communication, institutions' web-mails and other contacts. The views of consenting leaders were gathered using an exploratory questionnaire survey, and analysed.

Results: The views of 23 leaders from the variety of institutions were that most (60%) hypertension cases were diagnosed during emergency presentations; and the public's hypertension health knowledge remains generally inadequate. Hypertension information dissemination was mostly verbal rather than in written/print form. Basic resources are deployed in hypertension management. There was majority support for collaboration in hypertension health promotion (90.0%), blood pressure screening (95.7%) and hypertension referral (95.5%). Fewer institutions had the resources to support hypertension health promotion (55.0%) and blood pressure screening (42.1%) compared to hypertension referral (90.9%).

Conclusion: There is good support for faith institution involvement in hypertension health, with a particular interest in and capacity for health system referral. Deploying scarce resources to collaborate may be challenging. However, collaboration and better resources could improve hypertension prevention and management. Further work is needed for context specific innovation so faith institutions can contribute to hypertension health.