Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the major pervasive cause of mortality and morbidity in the world. They include ischemic heart disease, peripheral vascular diseases, pulmonary embolism, deep venous thrombosis, and others (1)
(2). The prevalence of CVD is reported to range from 5.4% to 13.4% in the Middle East. in 2004, the prevalence of CVD reported 5.5% among individuals in Saudi Arabia between 30 and 70-years-old people. Although, there is a lack of data regarding the actual prevalence of the disease in Saudi Arabia
(3).For that, Adulthood is an important time in the growth of health habits. Many health habits may change in this time because of the changes in parental, social, and personal formation factors
(4). it is important to educate people about CVD and its related risk factors to motivate them to adopt a healthy lifestyle. Information about the relationship between behavior and health is a significant factor in influencing safe behavioral choices. Moreover, it is important to consider the behavioral risk factors of CVD including unhealthy eating habits, sedentary lifestyle, and smoking, their risk perception, and health values to prevent and control CVD
(4).Despite the importance of a healthy lifestyle, In Saudi Arabia, 55.5 % of the population is either hypertensive or pre-hypertensive, and 20.2 % are diabetic ()()()()(). Also, a national study showed that there is a high percentage of obesity. In addition to this, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and obesity incidence are increasing with age
(4) furthermore, according to Baig M et al study performed at King Abdul-Aziz University (KAU) in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia has shown 7.5% of university students were hypertensive, 29.8% were overweight, 10.7% were moderately obese and 7.9% were severely obese. The majority of the participants were aware that a healthy lifestyle could prevent CVD. However, they were not following a healthy lifestyle (8).
indeed, Knowledge, attitudes, and practices on CVD risk factors were studied for older ages and women. However, only a few studies available about the perception of young people (9)(10).
Finally, from this perspective, our study aimed to investigate the prevalence, awareness, and health beliefs of behavioral risk factors of cardiovascular disease among university students in Makkah city. Based on the results, we’re planning an educational program to improve the awareness and motivation to control their behavioral CVD risk factors and it may have a great impact on preventing CVD in the community if controlled at an earlier age.
Research question
Are Umm Al-qura University students aware about cardiovascular disease’s behavioral risk factors factors and their health beliefs?
Objective
To estimate the awareness of behavioral risk factors for cardiovascular diseases among university students in Makkah city.
Research Hypothesis
Null Hypothesis: Umm Al-qura University students are not aware about CVD risk factors.
Alternative Hypothesis: Umm Al-qura University students are aware about CVD risk factors.
Material and methods:
1. study design: our study is a non-experimental cross-sectional study, which will be performed by using an online questionnaire.
2. study subject: the target population in this study is all students who study at Umm al-Qura (UQU) university under the emirate of Makkah region, Saudi Arabia.
The study Included all students in UQU from different specialties, male or female, Saudi or non-Saudi.
And excluded members of medicine faculty, all young people who are not university students, and people older than 26 years old.
3. sample size determination: the minimum sample size needed for this study was calculated by OpenEpi version 3.0, considering the target population of UQU students is about 101,931 students (-), keeping the confidence (CI) interval at level 95% and considering 50% of the prevalence of behavioral cardiovascular disease’s risk factors awareness among them.
The sample size was calculated to be 383 participants. in case of any possible data loss, the total sample size required is 400 participants
4. study instrument: a modified questionnaire from a published study used for data collection (-).
The questionnaire will be translated into Arabic, and then will be used for analysis and publication in an English language version.
The questionnaire consists of three parts;
The first part is about sociodemographic data such as age, gender, marital status, economic status, Saudi or non-Saudi nationality, and level of education.
The second part includes quantitive data such as height, weight to calculate body mass index (BMI).
The third part includes measuring the awareness of participants toward CVD behavioral risk factors such as smoking, lack of physical activity, fast food and soft drink intake, hours spent on television and computer use, personal history of diabetes mellitus, myocardial infarction and stroke as well as a family history of diabetes mellitus, hypertension, hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease (CAD) and myocardial infarction.
Note: the questionnaire is attached in the appendix.
5. data collection method and management:
An online questionnaire will be designed by Google forms, and then will be distributed electronically via social media apps.
Data will be collected from participants who matched our criteria. Electronic collection forms will not show any nominative information, it will be collected privately. Then data will be entered automatically into an excel sheet. After verification, data will be transferred into SPSS software for analysis.
