Sick but unaware: Hypertension in Indonesia

Abstract

Copyright © Society for Biodemography and Social Biology.Discrepancies between self-reported and measured hypertension pose a great risk to health because they prevent timely treatment. Analyzing the Indonesian Family Life Survey, we compared self-reported and measured hypertension to assess the extent of the misclassification of hypertension. Building on this, we estimated factors related to self-reported and measured hypertension. Our results show that different factors were involved in each case, suggesting that they are two different phenomena. More importantly, we estimated factors that increased awareness of hypertension and found that visiting a health facility was a very effective way of increasing awareness of hypertension among hypertensive patients.