Awareness on Cardiovascular Risk Factors among Young Adults in a Community of Baglung, Nepal

Introduction: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. It is becoming one of the major public health problems in developing countries and is common mainly among adult population. High blood pressure, high cholesterol level, high Blood glucose level, smoking, obesity and physical inactivity are conventional risk factors. The objective of the study was to assess the awareness of cardiovascular risk factors among young adults. Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among 264 young adults of Baglung Municipality. Non probability purposive sampling technique was used to select the sample. Structured interview schedule was used to collect data. Data was entered in Epi Data and further analyzed by using SPSS version 20. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used for data analysis. Results: The study found that the mean score of knowledge of the young adults was 17.84±2.834. More than half (52.3%) of them had satisfactory level of awareness, 33.3% had good level of awareness and 14.4% had poor level of awareness on cardiovascular risk factors. Most of them identified high blood pressure (95.8%), physical inactivity (94.7%), smoking and fatty foods (93.6%) as risk factors of CVDs whereas only 27.7%, 36.4% and 47.7% were aware of heredity, age and diabetes respectively. Significant association was found between level of awareness on cardiovascular risk factors and their ethnicity (p=0.006). Conclusion: More than half of the young adults had satisfactory level of awareness on cardiovascular risk factors. Most of them were aware of modifiable risk factors whereas few were aware of non-modifiable risk factors. Awareness raising programs can be conducted to increase the level of awareness on cardiovascular risk factors among adults.