The Use of Social Media for Raised Blood Pressure Awareness

Today is World Hypertension Day and High Blood Pressure continues to be a major global health burden. According to World Health Organization (2021) about 1.28 billion adults aged 30-79 years worldwide are hypertensive, with only about half of them aware of the condition and under treatment. Persistently uncontrolled blood pressure can lead to complications such as stroke, myocardial infarction, chronic kidney disease, heart failure, blindness and sexual dysfunction.

Hypertension is a major cause of premature deathw worldwide and one of SDG 3 goals is to reduce by one third premature mortality from non-communicable diseases (such as hypertension) through prevention and treatment by 2030 (UNDP, 2020). As earlier mentioned, many people are unaware they are hypertensive. To a lot of patients, hypertension is not perceived as dangerous because they don't feel any pain or discomfort when the blood pressure is uncontrolled and this is why it is known as the "Silent Killer".

I've seen people who have never measured their blood pressures in their entire lives and when I checked it happened to be markedly elevated. In my practice I've also encountered patients who know they're hypertensive but opt against taking medications because they "feel okay". Some believe their unproven herbal concoctions will heal them. To make matters worse relate some communities attribute patient demise due to complications of hypertension as "spiritual problems".

One major way we can reduce the global burden of Hypertension is by health awareness programs. There is need to create a sense urgency on the dangers of uncontrolled blood pressure and the need to adopt lifestyle modifications through health education with both conventional and unconventional means. There is currently not a more efficient means of creating awareness and passing information nowadays than through social media. There are even higher chances your health related content will be seen first on social media than on your personal page.

According to statistics from DataReportal (2022), there are 4.65 billion social media users worldwide and the average daily time spent on social media is 2 hours and 29 minutes. Sports, Entertainment, Journalism have all thrived in this social media area and have gained more popularity from social media than through the traditional means. It is common nowadays for a song to go viral faster through a Tiktok trend than from airplay on the radio. A tweet of an incident can reach the ends of the world faster than when awaiting "Breaking News" on Television. Healthcare must key into the potential of social media to achieve our goal of reducing premature deaths due to hypertension by 2030.

The video at the beginning was made for Hypertension awareness. Using my music skills I made a rap about raised blood pressure and a video was also created which was posted on my social media platforms Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter and Facebook. Reviews were positive and engagements occurred in the comment sections and direct messages. Many people were sensitized to check their blood pressures and some got diagnosed and commenced treatment. Many more lives can be saved through social media. One major advantage of social media is that you can measure who has received your information. You have real-time access to your analytics from number of views to comments, to reposts and others.

The video above is another one I did on numerous social media platforms. On Tiktok alone I had 1336 views. On Instagram this video was reposted severally and many more thousands of views were seen. Many engagements occurred in the comment sections and via direct messages. Many people got sensitized to measure their blood pressures through watching my videos. There are other healthcare professionals promoting health on social media and we can together provide health education to the people. There is a lot of false and misleading information online so it is our duty to ensure the people have access to the proper sources of health information. Information is very accessible on social media.

Other industries have maximized the potential of social media and Healthcare shouldn't fall behind. Health related content must however be catchy, diverse and interesting to have any staying power potent enough to create change.

References

DataReportal (2022) “Digital 2022 Global Digital Overview”, retrieved from https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2022-global-overview-report

UNDP (2020) Sustainable Development Goals, Available at: https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals

World Health Organization (2021) Hypertension, Available at: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hypertension