Explanation

• Does Active Self Care Outside of Formal Health Care Help Prevent Extremely High Blood Pressure? First I see whether those with allergy have lower blood pressure. Lowering blood pressure requires active, consistent care on multiple fronts. But hypertension itself often does not annoy us enough, on a daily basis, to prompt more active care (see “References” page). Unlike hypertension, allergy is a constant annoyance. It does prompts more active care. With more active care for one condition, more active care for other conditions may follow.

• Finding that fewer of those with allergy have extremely high blood pressure, I check which care plans each type of patients are on. Far more of those with allergy are under “Self-care intervention.” I assume that multiple blood pressure readings from a same patient equate in nature to multiple blood pressure readings from multiple patients, although in reality this may not be the case.

• To run this program, first download the Synthea 1000 patient sample datasets from https://synthea.mitre.org/downloads. Then open this document on R Studio and and click “Knit.”

BP

Care Plans w Allergy

Care Plans w/o Allergy

Care Plan Proportions

References

• All graphs here are based on data from Synthea (https://synthea.mitre.org/downloads)

• “Most people with high blood pressure have no signs or symptoms, even if blood pressure readings reach dangerously high levels.” (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-pressure/symptoms-causes/syc-20373410)