Assessing Risk of Cardiovascular Disease among School Teachers: A High Risk Approach at School Settings

The Chronic non-communicable diseases especially Coronary Heart Disease, Hypertension, Diabetes etc are major causes of death and disability worldwide and have increased from 55% (1990) of total burden of diseases to estimated 73% (2015). School Teachers face high amounts of stress during teaching and handling young students. And studies have shown high incidence of heart disease in primary and secondary school teachers. Hence, the study was undertaken to screen hypertension and diabetes among school teachers and to assessing risk of coronary vascular disease among school teachers which is an easily accessible group.

The present study was a cross sectional study, carried out in two randomly selected schools and school teachers were the study participants. Data regarding socio-demographic risk factors like age, sex and behavioral factors like tobacco use, physical inactivity etc, were collected and anthropometry was done at school setting. School teachers were screened for Diabetes and Hypertension. Data were analyzed by using proportions or percentages & chi-square test.

Total 72 teachers participated in the study and 59 (81.94% %) were females. Staff belonged to various age groups from 21 to 62 years and was from different social strata. The results showed that 4(5.56%) were showing hyperglycemia and 2 (2.8%) were known patients of diabetes. Among who got screened 12(16.67%) were having high blood pressure levels and 4(5.56%) were showing high normal pressure. The other risk factors of CVD were also prevalent among school teachers.