Hypertension and Asian Indian Americans Hypertension is the precursor to many other degenerative diseases. Chronic high blood pressure leads to higher risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke. It can also make diseases such as diabetes and renal disease much worse. Hypertension is common across all population groups with around a third of the general population developing the condition. Ethnic minorities in the United States have more prevalence of hypertension than their non-Hispanic Caucasian counterparts, of that one third, about 38 percent are Asian Americans, and of that 38 percent, around 40 percent are East/Southeast Asian (Fei, 2017). Prevalence rates increase with acculturation, the longer a patient has been in the United States, …show more content…
Education and socio-economic status are not a large factor attributing to this prevalence because a lot of Asian Indian immigrants are educated and have access to health care. Disparities in health care play a role in this issue. There is the preconceived notion of the “model minority” that Asians and Asian Indians fall into, that Asians don’t get overweight, eat healthfully, and therefore aren’t prone to degenerative diseases like the rest of the population, but that simply isn’t true. Even if Asian Americans BMI is low, there are still higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease, which indicates that health monitoring needs to be implemented at earlier stages, before disease progress too far. Asian Indians are at greater risk of dying from ischemic heart disease, and being sent home from the hospital without proper medication for heart failure (Qian, 2018). Some Asian Indian Americans also feel they are being discriminated against in the health care system when they are trying to access health care. And this perceived discrimination leads to higher rates of chronic illnesses, such as hypertension, as well as non-compliance by the patient for any care they may receive, only exacerbating the health issue. With longer acculturation time, Asian Indian Americans were actually more likely to feel that they are