Snack Bar 

Religious leaders, physicians fight hypertension in Tanzania and beyond

Dr. Bazil Kavishe, a senior researcher at Tazania’s National Institute for Medical Research, speaks with Sheikh Hassani Yassini Mchondo at a workshop for religious leaders. Photo Credit: Noël Heaney/Cornell University
By

Read the full story in by Susan Kelley and Noël Heaney in the Cornell Chronicle.

More than a thousand religious leaders in Tanzania are collaborating on a large-scale study with researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine’s Center for Global Health and Tanzanian colleagues. The project asks an innovative question: Can religious leaders use their influence to help lower life-threatening hypertension in their communities?

The stakes are high. Hypertension can result in heart disease, heart and kidney failure, stroke, dementia, blindness and more. It is the world’s leading risk factor for premature death.

If successful, the strategy could prevent many thousands of deaths not only in Tanzania but throughout Africa, which has the highest age-adjusted rate of hypertension in the world. And it could benefit U.S. communities where hypertension outcomes are poor.