Intensifying self-awareness of undergraduate students toward hypertension risk factors through health education

Abstract

Introduction: Hypertension in adolescents’ risk factors include foods that contain high sodium, lack of physical activity, stress, obesity, alcohol consumption, and smoking. Order to prevent hypertension incidence in adolescents by increasing self-awareness through the provision of health education. This study aimed to determine the health education effect regarding the risk factors of hypertension (stress and sodium diet) on the self-awareness of undergraduate students in Yogyakarta. Methods: This study was a quantitative study with a quasi-experiment pretest & posttest with a control group design. The hypertension self-awareness questionnaire was used in this study and the results will be classified into two groups (the control and the intervention group). The sample obtained in this study was 54 respondents. The Mann-Whitney U and Wilcoxon Signed Rank test was done in this study. Results: It showed that there were significant differences in the intervention group and control group. There were significant differences in results found before and after health education (significance value 0.000), while the result for the control group is 0.06, which indicates that there were no significant differences before and after the leaflet. Conclusions: It can be concluded that health education regarding risk factors for hypertension (stress and a high sodium diet) can increase self-awareness for undergraduate students in Yogyakarta.