World hypertension day and screening – Bulgaria (AMSB)

Name of the activity: World hypertension day and screening

Country/NMO: Bulgaria (AMSB)

Program: Healthy Lifestyles & Non-Communicable Diseases

Contact information: [email protected]

Type of the activity: Campaign

General description:

This activity aims to increase awareness for arterial hypertension and other diseases that are consequences of the latter such as atrial fibrillation. The main method is informing the general population, screening for hypertension and atrial fibrillation, analyzing the results.

Focus area:

Cardiovascular Disease

Problem statement:

Cardiovascular diseases are the main reason for death nowadays. Not only in my country, but worldwide. We want to raise the awareness of that how important is to check regulary our blood pressure and what are the risks for our health if not taking care of it. Cardiovascular diseases are not only personal or family problem. They are social too because a lot of the state budget goes to cover theese expenses.

Target groups and beneficiaries:

Our target group is adults. I can’t state exact age because as you know there is tendency of rejuvenation of the diseases. Mostly in danger are the people over 50-60 years. As we are going to use this campaign as a screening we will extend our target group in order to find abnormal blood pressure numbers even in younger patients.

Objectives and indicators of success:

Most of all we want to raise awareness. We want to show to the people why is so important to take care of their blood pressure. One way is by publishing news articles or interviews with doctors – they will know what are the risk factors, what they can improve in their daily life, what to change in their habits in order to prevent accidents. By showing them statistics they will see how big amount of money are going for covering these health issues.

Methodology:

– Information campaign – flyers; news articles; interviews with doctors; videos of people who already had an accident and telling what this caused to them as a consequence.
– Making events – Spreading it on- and offline using papers, posters, social media.
– Measuring people’s blood pressure in public places or noticeable spots – attracting attention of participants.
– Finding volunteers for helping with the measurement – google forms/ polls for distributing the roles/ shifts of everyone.
– Finding sponsors who will provide us with blood pressure measurement devices.
– Peer to peer education for the volunteers – teaching them how to measure blood pressure; what to say/ not to say to the participants; how to answer to most asked questions; what to do in case there is registered really high result.

Plans for evaluation:

Random blood pressure measurement can reduce the risk of cardio-vascular conditions. I consider this campaign successfull because we aim into prevention. Because if even one gets informed of potential condition, his or her life quality is going to be higher.