Cardiovascular risk reduction for African-American men through health empowerment and anger management

Abstract

Objective To examine impact of CVD risk reduction intervention for African-American men in the Atlanta Empowerment Zone (AEZ) designed to target anger management.

Design Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test was employed as a non-parametric alternative to the t-test for independent samples. This test was employed because the data used in this analysis involved two correlated samples that failed to meet the assumptions of the t-test. The t-test was employed to determine whether a significant difference exists between the means of two distributions or the mean of one distribution and a target value.

Setting The study was conducted in the City of Atlanta's Empowerment Zone, which is made up of 30 neighbourhoods, has a poverty rate of 57.4 per cent and a population of 50,000.

Method Baseline and follow-up data were collected via survey instrumentation from 192 and 128 participants respectively. The data collection instrument collected information on participants' demographic characteristics, knowledge of cardiovascular disease risk and health practices regarding physical activity and dietary behaviour.

Results Findings regarding the anger management component of the intervention revealed significant differences on three of the ten behavioural variables examined, with just one (`I fly off the handle') approaching significance (p < .07). The findings emphasize that empowerment interventions which focus on health empowerment models that are culturally, racially and ethnically appropriate are needed and effective.

Conclusion Intervention programmes aimed to integrate anger management and lifestyle change approaches with cardiovascular disease education, prevention, treatment and rehabilitation programmes would be beneficial for patients who want to avail themselves of these interventions (e.g. AMEN).