The Relationship between Multidimensional Social Support and Medication Adherence among Hypertensive Patients in Kenya

Abstract

Background: Medication adherence is regarded as important to improve hypertension control. Therefore, research about how to improve hypertensive patients’ adherence to their regimens becomes a hot topic. Multidimensional social support, meaning support that one could obtain from family, friends and significant others, might be useful to increase medication adherence, and thus we tried to examine the relationship between multidimensional social support and medication adherence both quantitatively and qualitatively. Methods: The research setting is Kenya where is known as underserved. Convenient sampling was used to recruit hypertensive patients with the help from physicians in three clinics. After finishing a digital questionnaire, a follow-up interview was delivered to participants as long as they were willing to join. The independent variable, Multidimensional social support, was assessed by Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS). Two different scales are used to measure one outcome variable: Medication Adherence Questionnaire (MAQ) and Hill-Bone Compliance Scale (HBCS). After identifying several potential confounders, ordered logistic regression and logistic regression were used to determine the relationship between independent and dependent variables. Results: Multidimensional social support is insignificantly correlated with medication adherence using both measurements of medication adherence. However, follow-up interviews provide relatively sufficient information about how multidimensional social support could affect medication adherence, and even hypertension control. Conclusions: Although there is no correlation between multidimensional social support and medication adherence among hypertensive patients in our study, further research is still needed to improve hypertension control from the perspective of social support or medication adherence.