Prevalence of Self-Reported Hypertension in Deaf Adults Who Use American Sign Language

Abbi N Simons, Christopher J Moreland, Poorna Kushalnagar

In the U.S., roughly one-third of adults have hypertension; another third have prehypertension. The prevalence of hypertension in deaf American Sign Language (ASL) users is unknown. We address this gap through a descriptive study for the prevalence of hypertension in the American Deaf community, and discuss future directions to address this issue. Self-reported data for 1388 ASL-using deaf adults were compared to a secondary data of 2830 English-speaking hearing adults. Frequency and percentages were used to describe the prevalence of hypertension in the deaf community. Age-weighted analysis was used to compare unmodifiable risk factors and hypertension rate between deaf and hearing adults. Deaf and hearing samples' hypertension rates for gender and age were similar. Significant group differences between deaf and hearing samples emerged across race. Compared to the hearing controls, our deaf sample demonstrated a significantly decreased risk for hypertension with a prevalence of 37% (compared to 45% in the hearing sample). Although the hypertension rate for gender and age was similar across deaf and hearing samples, between-group disparities exist for race. The lower rate of hypertension in our deaf sample is likely a consequence of underdiagnoses due to lower health literacy and poor patient-physician communication. Furthermore, deaf Black Americans' lower rates compared to hearing Black Americans may be due to poor patient-physician communication, not having regular providers, or social stressors. It is recommended that modifiable risk factors and social determinants be investigated to determine their effect on hypertension within the deaf community.