13Background: Hypertension is a leading cause of cardio-vascular diseases and its attributed 14 mortality. No previous study, however, assessed the prevalence and associated factors of 15 hypertension in the study area.
16Methods: We recruited a representative sample of 627 adult individuals from selected kebeles 17 of Hosanna town. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed in the study. A structured 18 questionnaire using the WHO STEPS approach was employed to conduct a face to face interview 19 and physical measurements. For each participant, we measured blood pressure two times after 20 giving 10 minutes breaks between the measurements and we took the average. Hypertension 21 status was defined as "systolic blood pressure ≥140mmhg and/or diastolic blood pressure 22 ≥90mmhg". Undiagnosed hypertension was defined as participants who had raised blood 23 pressure on measurement, but not aware of it before. We used Multivariable logistic regression 24 model to determine factors associated with hypertension.
25Results: The overall prevalence of hypertension was found to be 17.2% (95% CI 14.5 -19.9), 26 19.3% among men and 14.2% among women, of which 10.2% were unaware of it before.
27Hypertension was significantly associated with old age ≥35 years, excess alcohol intake, 28 consumption of saturated oil/fat), consumption of unspecified different types of oil/fat and 29 overweight/obesity.30 Conclusion: The prevalence of hypertension (both diagnosed and undiagnosed) in the town is 31 unacceptably high. This is also related to modifiable risk factors like excessive alcohol intake, 32 overweight/obesity and consumption of saturated fat/oil. Therefore, designing health information 33 provision systems on the risk factors of hypertension and promotion of good health practices 3 34 should be considered. Moreover, the health departments should facilitate blood pressure 35 screening programs at community levels to identify and treat undiagnosed hypertension. 36 Key words: Hypertension, Undiagnosed hypertension, Raised blood pressure, Community 37 based, WHO STEPS 38 4 40 8 131 of unhealthy diet was measured using the fruit and vegetables consumption level, eating outside 132 the home and type of oil/fat most used for meal preparation. 133 Data management and analysis 134 Data were checked, cleaned, and entered in to Epi data 3.1. Version software, then imported to 135 SPSS version 20 software for analysis. Incomplete and inconsistent data were excluded from the 136 analysis. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the sample. The prevalence of hypertension 137 was described using the proportion and 95% confidence interval. Associations between 138 independent variables and dependent variables were analyzed first using bivariate analysis to 139 identify factors eligible for multivariable analysis. Those variables with p-value < 0.25 in the 140 bivariate analysis were included in the multi-variable analysis. The magnitude of the association 141between the independent and dependent variables was measured using odds rat...