RESULTS
Demographics and baseline measures
Of the 57 participants, one patient in the experimental
group and four in the control group
dropped out prior to the post-intervention data
collection due to residential move (one in control
group) and refusal of blood test (one in experimental
group and three in control group). The
fi nal sample size consisted of 30 in the experimental
group and 22 in the control group.
The mean age of the participants was 64 years
old (±5.8 years). Fifty-seven percent of the participants
were female, and most (78.8%) were high
school graduates or above. The majority of participants
(86.5%) perceived their economic status as
mid-level. In addition to hypertension, 51.9% of
the participants had comorbid conditions, including
cardiovascular disease (19.2%) and diabetes
(13.5%). Mean elapsed time from diagnosis with
hypertension was 6.7 years (±5.97). On average,
participants were taking two different antihypertensive
agents (Table 1). The prevalence of metabolic
syndrome was 70% in the experimental
group and 54.5% in the control group. Baseline