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Heart Health Education Can Positively Influence Underserved,
Rural Populations
Special to The Truth
Improving dietary habits and learning skills such as
reading food labels and
recognizing the signs of a heart attack have the potential
to improve cardiovascular health among underserved rural
populations, according to newly published research from
Florida State University.
Laurie Abbott, an assistant
professor in the College of Nursing, found significant
improvements in food-related behaviors associated with
cardiovascular health by
African-American
participants from rural northern Florida counties after they
completed a six-week intervention that addressed major
cardiovascular disease risk factors. The study, published in
the journal Health Education Research [1],
examined the results from an earlier cluster randomized
trial
with a secondary data
analysis.
“The positive findings
indicate that the population may be receptive to health
behavior research efforts and health promotion strategies to
help them learn ways to stay well,” Abbott said. “During the
program sessions, the participants actively engaged in the
program activities and verbalized positive comments about
the intervention and the interactive strategies used.”
In the first study,
researchers recruited 229 African-Americans from 12 churches
in two rural northern Florida counties to participate in the
study. Half were exposed to “With Every Heartbeat is Life,”
a culturally relevant health promotion curriculum developed
by the National
Heart, Lung, and Blood
Institute. The other half served as the control group.
Health habits or behaviors
associated with cardiovascular disease such as food-related
risk factors, physical activity, alcohol and tobacco use and
confidence levels in health habits, were measured at
baseline and at six weeks for both groups.
After the intervention group
participants completed the program, researchers found
significant improvements in food-related behaviors, such as
increased fruit consumption and eating more vegetables than
meat at meals. Participants were also more likely to read
food nutrition labels
while grocery shopping,
drain fat after cooking meat, consume fewer sugar-sweetened
beverages and reduce intake of high-fat dairy products.
In addition, there were
significant group differences postintervention regarding
confidence in cooking heart healthy foods, reading food
labels and recognizing heart attack symptoms.
“Improved confidence in
reading food labels meant that they could go to the grocery
store and make healthier choices,” Abbott said. “I had one
participant in his 60s who stated that, prior to
participation in the program, he had never read labels when
shopping for food in the grocery store. After receiving the
program, he began looking at the sodium content and choosing
foods lower in sodium as recommended for people diagnosed
with hypertension.”
Recognizing signs of a heart
attack can help people seek medical assistance sooner,
especially in rural areas where the hospital and emergency
medical services may be farther away than in urban
settings.
“Sometimes, remote distance
can influence delays that could cause loss of life or
damaged heart muscle if the patient is experiencing a heart
attack,” said Abbott, who received the 2018 American Public
Health Association Public Health Nursing Junior Investigator
Award for her
research on advancing
cardiovascular health equity among underserved, rural
populations.
The American Heart
Association projects a 10 percent increase in the prevalence
of cardiovascular disease when patients have detrimental
social and environment health habits such as physical
inactivity, unhealthy dietary practices and lack of
preventive health services.
Over her 25-year career as a
nurse working in hospital, clinic and community facilities,
Abbott noticed that her rural patients didn’t always have
the knowledge, skills and resources they needed to reduce
disease risk factors and enhance wellness.
“Recognizing this need
instilled a passion within me to go into rural community
settings and do something more to help rural citizens learn
how to stay well, reduce modifiable cardiovascular disease
risk factors, and avoid hospitalization and chronic disease
exacerbation.”
Primary prevention
strategies for promoting healthy lifestyle behaviors such as
increasing produce consumption and physical activity levels
and reducing dietary fat intake and smoking can potentially
improve heart health awareness, build individual capacity
and advance cardiovascular health equity among people living
in rural areas.
Abbott said future research
efforts will involve testing the sustainability of improved
cardiovascular health habits over longer intervals of time
and the inclusion of biometric screening components such as
blood pressure measures and weight. More research is also
needed to understand the influences of factors such as race,
ethnicity and rurality on health risk behaviors as well as
strategies for risk reduction.
Elizabeth H. Slate, the
Duncan McLean and Pearl Levine Fairweather Professor in the
FSU Department of Statistics, and Jennifer L. Lemacks,
associate professor of nutrition and food systems at the
University of Southern Mississippi, also contributed to the
study.
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