The prevalence and probability of hypertension among youth 15-34 years old, in South Africa

Researcher: Lucas Banda, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Supervisor: Prof. Nicole de Wet-Billings, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

There is limited and not so latest information from nationally representative data that exist about the prevalence of hypertension among the youth 15-34 ‘years olds’ in South Africa, though the prevalence is over 30% among the adult population 15+ (Seedat, Rayner, and Veriava, 2014). Youth in South Africa are faced with challenges such as unemployment and environments that expose them to poor diet habits, to alcohol and sub-stance abuse (Peltzer and Phaswana-Mafuya, 2013). Thus, understanding the probability of hypertension among the youth, 15-34 years in South Africa, conditional to demographic, socioeconomic and behavioral factors is critical.